Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese (born 1955) is a physician-author, Professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at Stanford University Medical School and Senior Associate Chair of the Department of Internal Medicine . ^[1] He is the author ook or three best-selling books, two memoirs and a novel. In 2011, he was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine . ^[2]

He was born in Ethiopia to parents from Kerala , India , who worked as teachers. ^[3] In 2009, Knopf published his new book and first novel, Cutting for Stone . ^[4] in 2010, Random House published the paperback version of the book and since dat time, it has risen steadily up the bestseller charts, ranking # 2 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction list on March 13, 2011. ^[5] it has leg on the New York Times list for well over two years. ^[6]

Medical training and early career

Verghese Began his medical training in Ethiopia, but his education was interrupted prolongation the civil Unrest there-when the Emperor was deposed and a Marxist military government took over. ^[7] He cameramen to America with his parents and two brothers (his elder brother George Verghese is an engineering professor at MIT ). Verghese worked as an orderly for a year voordat going to India where he COMPLETED his medical studies at Madras Medical College in Madras, now Chennai . ^[8] In his written work, he refers to his time working as an orderly in a hospital in America as deeply Influential in confirming his desire to finish his medical training; the experience had bepaald im a deep understanding of the patient’s hospital situation met haar varying levels of treatment and care. He has zegt the insights he gained from this work helped im Become a more empathic physician and resulted in the motto, “Imagining the Patient’s Experience”, therein defined his later work at the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics in San Antonio , Texas , welke he directed for five years from 2002 to 2007. ^[9]

After finishing his medical degree ( MBBS ) from Madras University in 1979, and-then completing his internship there, he cameramen to the United States as one of Hundreds of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) from India seeking open residency positions. If he DESCRIBED it in a New Yorker article, “The Cowpath to America”, many FMGs of or in had to work in the less popular hospitals and communities, and Frequently in inner cities . ^[10] He opted for a residency in a fire-new program in Johnson City , Tennessee , affiliated with East Tennessee State University . He was a resident there from 1980 to 1983, and-then secured a coveted fellowship at Boston University School of Medicine in 1983, where he worked for two years at Boston City Hospital and where he saw the early signs of the urban epidemic of HIV in dat city. Returning to Johnson City in 1985 as an assistant professor of medicine (he later became a tenured associate professor there), have Encountered the first signs of a second epidemic, dat of rural AIDS . His work with the patients have cared for and his insights into his personal transformation from being “homoignorant”, as he describes it, to maintaining an understanding of his patients resulted a few years later in his first book, My Own Country .

New direction: writing

Exhausted from the overwhelming nature of his work with his patients, with his first marriage under strain and in-then maintaining begun to write seriously, he decided to take a break. He toegepast to and was accepted to the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa . He cashed in his Retirement plan and his tenured position to go to Iowa City with his young family. There, he dogs his schrijfvaardigheid and earned a Master of Fine Arts in 1991. ^[11] After Iowa, he accepted a position as Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in El Paso , Texas , where he lived for the next 11 years. On Despite his title, he was the sole infectious disease physician for a busy county hospital-Thomason Hospital-for many years. His skills and commitment to patient care resulted in his being Awarded the Grover E. Murray Distinguished Professorship of Medicine at the Texas Tech School of Medicine.

During these years in El Paso, he’ll be wrote and published his first book, the bestseller My Own Country : A Doctor’s Story , about his experiences in East Tennessee, but ook pondering themes or displacement, Diaspora , responses to foreignness and the many personen and families AFFECTED by the AIDS epidemic. This book was one of five Chosen as Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and it was later made JSON a movie by Mira Nair with Lost star Naveen Andrews playing his role.

His second book, The Tennis Partner : A Story of Friendship and Loss, ook written prolongation his time in El Paso, is Another eloquently personal story, this time about his friend and tennis partner, a medical resident in recovery from drug addiction. The story deals with the ultimate death of his friend and Explores the issue and prevalence of physician drug abuse. It’ll be concludes the account of the breakdown of his first marriage, an integral part of the narrative in zowel My Own Country and The Tennis Partner . This book was reissued in 2009.

Verghese has three children, two grown sons from his first marriage and a third in his second marriage.

Bedside medicine

Verghese became founding director of The Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio in 2002. ^[12] His focus here was on medical humanities as a way to preserve the innate empathy and sensitivity therein Brings students to medical school but welke the rigor hun training Frequently represses. In San Antonio, besides ontwikkelingslanden a formal humanities and ethics curriculum that was integrated JSON all four years of the medical school program, he Invited medical students to Accompany im on Bedside rounds than a way of demonstrating his Conviction about the value of the physical Examination in diagnosing patients and in ontwikkelingslanden a caring, two-way patient-doctor relationship dat benefits not only patients and families hun but ook the physician. ^[13] At San Antonio, have held the Joaquin CIGARROA Chair and the Marvin Forland Distinguished Professorship. ^[14]

After a relatief short, five-year tenure in San Antonio, he was recruited to Stanford University School of Medicine in late 2007 as a tenured professor for the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Associate Chair of Internal Medicine. ^[15] His deep interest in Bedside medicine and his reputation as a Clinician, teacher and writer port continued to define his role at Stanford, where he was deeply involved with patients at Stanford Hospital and directs the third-year medical student clerkship. His writing and work continuously to explore the belang or Bedside medicine, the ritual of the physical Examination in the era of advanced technology, where, as he notes Frequently in his writing, the patient in the bed of or in IGNORED in favor of the patient data in the computer. ^[16] He is Renowned at Stanford for his weekly Bedside rounds, where he insists on Examining patients without knowledge or hun diagnosis to demo streets the wealth of information available from the physical exam. This specialization has led to the development of “The Stanford 25”, a new initiative at Stanford designed to showcase and teach 25 fundamentele physical exam skills en hun diagnostic benefits to interns. ^[17]

Cutting for Stone

His first novel, Cutting for Stone is set in Ethiopia and the United States and describes a period of dramatic political change in Ethiopia, a time of great loss for the author himself, who as an expatriate had to leave the country as he though had leg born there. ^[18] Cutting for Stone reached # 1 on the Independent Booksellers list and was optioned as a movie. ^[19] Verghese’s writing has ook Appeared in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly , Atlantic , The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, Forbes.com, The Daily Beast and The Wall Street Journal.

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