RESIDENTS: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors

With great clarity and authority, David Ewing Duncan dissects the complicated process by which America's doctors are trained - a process little known by those outside of medicine, and often misunderstood even by physicians who have been through it. Here is a sympathetic yet provocative examination of this most critical phase of training; years that profoundly shape young physicians and directly impact how our healers will treat us, especially as managed care propels us into a new era of health care.
Residents draws on four years of intensive study, hundreds of interviews, and thousands of hours spent following and living among residents, medical educators, and patients. In their voices, oftentimes strained and wearied by long, grueling weeks in the wards and O.R.s, we feel the repercussions of a needlessly rigorous and, Duncan contends, outmoded system.
Residents also proposes a blueprint to expand on reforms already under way in some of the nation's great academic medical centers. Amid all the abstractions and technicalities batted about by policy makers and pundits, Residents offers real insight into the root cause of our nation's health care predicament and how we might begin to fix it.