Listen free for 30 days

  • Letter to a Young Female Physician

  • Notes from a Medical Life
  • Written by: Suzanne Koven
  • Narrated by: Suzanne Koven
  • Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Letter to a Young Female Physician cover art

Letter to a Young Female Physician

Written by: Suzanne Koven
Narrated by: Suzanne Koven
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $22.26

Buy Now for $22.26

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

In 2017, Dr. Suzanne Koven published an essay describing the challenges faced by female physicians, including her own personal struggle with "imposter syndrome" - a long-held secret belief that she was not smart enough or good enough to be a "real" doctor. Accessed by thousands of listeners around the world, Koven's Letter to a Young Female Physician has evolved into a deeply felt reflection on her career in medicine.

Koven tells candid and illuminating stories about her pregnancy during a grueling residency in the AIDS era; the illnesses of her child and aging parents during which her roles as a doctor, mother, and daughter converged, and sometimes collided; the sexism, pay inequity, and harassment that women in medicine encounter; and the twilight of her career during the COVID-19 pandemic. As she traces the arc of her life, Koven finds inspiration in literature and faces the near-universal challenges of burnout, body image, and balancing work with marriage and parenthood.

Letter to a Young Female Physician reveals a woman forging her authentic identity in a modern landscape that is as overwhelming and confusing as it is exhilarating in its possibilities. Koven offers an indelible account, by turns humorous and profound, that sheds light on our desire to find meaning, and on a way to be our own imperfect selves in the world.

©2021 Suzanne Koven (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

What the critics say

"[Koven] is rueful and delightful and keeps on building a careening and fascinating life...[Letter to a Young Female Physician] is a warm and wry epistle, the endless and near-perfect email you wish your mother, your mentor and your therapist would sit down and type out together." (Laura Kolbe, Wall Street Journal)

"[These] phenomenal essays...are full of acuity and generosity...[Koven's] writing is full of humor, candor, by turns (and often simultaneously) beautiful and heartbreaking shards of narrative, about her own life and the lives of her patients and colleagues. She's also got a killer sense of humor and a fantastic eye for detail." (Leslie Jamison, LitHub)

"Suzanne Koven's Letter to a Young Female Physician is so wise, beautifully written, tender, and full of heart that it should be required reading for every person - young, female, physician, or otherwise. This is a transporting memoir, and an instructive one." (Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance)

What listeners say about Letter to a Young Female Physician

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

inrw3sting story filled with insights

Based on the sample, I thought that it was a self-help type book. It is more a viography with insights woven in.

I am not a doctor, I am a healthcare professional who trained around the same time he 80's me 90's. I see many parallels in the changes in the field and in culture in general.

I am about halfway through but I thought I would write this now as the book keeps getting better. Ig you were trained in any Healthcare profession and found yourself stressed by it, this could be a very helpful book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!