Doctors who write was the focus of a segment on NPR's All Things Considered late yesterday, and Stanford physician Abraham Verghese, MD, was featured. He's the well-known author of "Cutting For Stone" and "My Own Country: A Doctor's Story," and he had this to say about his two professions:
"I think I was drawn to medicine with a strong sense of medicine being a romantic pursuit, a calling," Verghese says. "I still really am very much in love with medicine, and I love what I do. And I often think the writing emanates from that stance of being a physician. And I worry that I would become mute if I ever left medicine and tried to write."
Audio and a transcript of the interview can be found here. Verghese also discussed his writing in a Q&A with one of my colleagues earlier this year.