Prognosis: Poor is a poignant snapshot of one physician's medical training. Frances Southwick, D.O. explores the highs and lows (more often the lows) of the process of becoming a doctor. She delivers colorful detail inside the mind of one trainee, herself, through undergraduate school, medical school and residency. The book focuses most heavily on the capstone of family medicine training: three years of residency in a well-respected Pittsburgh hospital. Dr. Southwick courageously explores her most difficult moments of self-doubt and hopelessness, but wraps the text up with a chapter cataloguing current problems in the training process and how they might be remedied. This memoir highlights the problem of depression in physicians and physicians-in-training as a looming, large, current problem. Greg Gallik, D.O., Dr. Southwick's mentor and the medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Family Health Center states: Prognosis Poor shines a much needed light on medical training in the U.S. Frances Southwick somberly illustrates the intense demands placed on those who choose to devote their lives to improve the health of others while simultaneously forcing them to ignore their own. Dr. Southwick's memoir has triggered many similar memories of my own medical training and pointedly shows how little we have learned. She has succeeded in describing the idealistic driving force behind a student's desire to become a physician contrasted with the often painful reality of the process itself. It is my hope that this book will contribute to creating a more humane and supportive medical training experience for the next generation of young doctors.
About the Author: Frances Southwick, D.O. is a physician and non-fiction writer. Each step along her academic path, she has been inspired to write and share her experiences. Her work Short Prose was published in Spiritus Mundi, Colorado State University's Honors literary magazine. Her essay How Patients Teach Their Doctors about Humanism in Medicine was published the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine Magazine. Her co-authored article entitled Exploring Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy in an Elderly Patient with Acute Anxiety Attack was published in the West Virginia Medical Journal. Most recently, her essay, Jude Asleep was selected for the upcoming volume of Voices from the Attic, a publication from participants in Madwomen in the Attic writing courses at Carlow, University. She earned her B.A. in philosophy from Colorado State University, her D.O. from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine and completed her family medicine residency training at UPMC Shadyside in Pittsburgh. Her most recent work, Prognosis: Poor, is her memoir that addresses the medical training process in the U.S. Dr. Southwick practices family medicine with special interest in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine in Pittsburgh, PA. She teaches family medicine residents at Shadyside Hospital and co-leads a Balint group for University of Pittsburgh medical students. She lives with her wife Judith Avers and their beloved three gray cats. By sharing her life experiences, she aims to give validation, hope and peace to those in similar circumstances.