Alpha Docs: The Making of a Cardiologist

Muñoz recounts his year as a cardiology fellow at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University Hospital, in this memoir of his search for more experience and wisdom—and his place in medicine. He finds that the fellowship is “all about focus” as he applies medical skills that are “lofty, technological, and primitive” in rotations that include cardiac intensive care and procedures such as heart transplants. Muñoz struggles with the dilemma of a profession that grants the “power of life and death over fellow human beings” and witnesses the “injustice” of patients who “seem to have nine unearned lives” while others “cling to one.” The new doctor also realizes that families “invest their confidence in our medical knowledge, but evaluate us on our ability to connect.” But after solving the mystery of how a change in medication nearly killed one ailing patient, he concludes that it has been a good year. “Does it ever end, the learning and training and practicing and teaching and experiences?” Muñoz asks. If it did, he notes, it would mean “we’d found the answers or given in to disease.” Muñoz begins to find his niche in the medical world, and his journey will inspire doctors in training and patients alike. Agent: David Black, David Black Literary Agency. (Aug.)