Lives on Brown Cards

As Lives on Brown Cards opens, the reader meets a newly minted doctor who believes she' s doing her very best by relying on the vital stats scrawled on each patient' s "e; brown card,"e; unaware that to become a truly great physician, she must look beyond the numbers and into the lives of people behind them. In case after case, her mentors push her to dig deeper to find out about the humanity of her patients- and her own. Although struggling to meet these expectations under the weight of an overwhelming workload on a busy rotation nicknamed "e; Coma and Death,"e; she does begin to look beyond the brown cards for the human stories that will help guide her care. But the patient she learns the most from in the end is herself, when a back injury lands her on the other side of the stethoscope. Wearing a hospital gown instead of a white coat, her perspective shifts as she waits, helpless and in pain, for a shot that doesn' t come soon enough. On discharge stuck at home, she feels adrift and lonely longing for the sense of purpose that only work gave her. Through the relentless pain of being a patient, she soon discovers a caring and compassionate physician awakening within her.