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SAN ANTONIO
MEDICINE

Pandemic

and

Pedagogy:

COVID-19 and
Medical Education

A Review of “Life on the
Line: Young Doctors Come
of Age in a Pandemic”

By David Alex Schulz, CHP

Hippocrates’ Greece had two words for
time: Chronos for normal time and Kairos for
periods of great challenge, accomplishment
and risk. Fourth-year medical students un-
knowingly crossed from one to the other in
the spring of 2020, as schools across the coun-
try sped up graduation to help hospitals be-
sieged by the novel coronavirus.
New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg
followed some of those students, speaking
with them daily. Now in a book, she details the
experiences of six young physicians thrust into
the frontlines at Bellevue and Montefiore
Health Systems during the earliest days of the
COVID-19 pandemic. The stories of newly-
minted Drs. Sam, Iris, Gabriela, Jay, Elana and
Ben provide fresh insights and perspectives on
the enduring crisis. Documenting their sud- fore a vaccine was promised or delivered. training. After all the stress of medical
den entrée to the world of patient care reflects Goldberg’s journalistic technique brings the school—the late-night cramming, the un-
on how the current crisis may alter medical ed- stark uncertainty and confusion of those early godly early wake-ups, the Step 1 exam, the
ucation for years to come. days back to life. Step 2 exam, all those endless exams—this was
Goldberg’s “Life on the Line: Young Doc- With last names redacted, we are intro- supposed to be a spring of unwinding, before
tors Come of Age in a Pandemic” (Harper duced first to Dr. Sam as he finds his world in residency started in July.”
Publishing, June 2021) refrains from political flux: “The third Friday in March was Match Instead, NYU offered Sam’s class early
or polemical judgments; its examination pro- Day. After four years of medical school, Sam graduation if they wanted to work in hospi-
vides very personal recounting of events from and his classmates would be placed into resi- tals overwhelmed by the surge of COVID-
spring through summer, 2020, concluding be- dency programs for the next phase of their 19 patients. Swearing to the Hippocratic

30 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • December 2021