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By James Maskalyk
320 pp, $25
New York, NY, Spiegel & Grau, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-3855-2651-7

JAMA. 2009;302(16):1816.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

My wife and I have had a recurring conversation ever since I started my internship more than 14 years ago. She will say that she often wishes that she could do something as meaningful as practicing medicine and healing the sick. I counter by saying that while it is satisfying knowing that I have made a difference in a child's life, the truth is that very often I feel my role is merely that of an interchangeable gear in the giant machine that is the US health care system, and that were I to miss work on any given day, my patients would receive excellent care from my colleagues, thus making the significance of what I do smaller than is immediately apparent to the casual observer. While there certainly are cases that I can look back on and know with certainty that my personally being in the right place at . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Dennis Rosen, MD, Reviewer
Division of Respiratory Diseases
Children's Hospital Boston
Boston, Massachusetts
dennis.rosen@childrens.harvard.edu

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