Book cover of Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life

Book description

In 2017, Dr Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by women doctors, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome"-a long-held, secret belief that she was not clever enough or good enough to be a "real" doctor. Accessed nearly 300,000 times by readers around the world, Koven's…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Letter to a Young Female Physician as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I bought this book for my own daughter, who is preparing to enter medical school soon. Dr. Koven shares her own personal story of finding her way as a woman, mother, and daughter in the challenging world of medicine.

I hope that my daughter will use this book as both a prep manual for what lies ahead and an honest account of the challenges and beauty that she will encounter.

Dr. Koven and I are on the same broad faculty at Harvard Medical School, though we had never crossed paths until our medical memoirs were released the same year. I got to know her a bit in that time, but even more so in the pages of her wonderful memoir, Letter to a Young Female Physician. This book so clearly elucidates and humanizes the complex path of becoming a physician as a woman and the lessons she learned along the way. Its pages are as charming as they are poignant.

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