Pauline Chen

When Pauline Chen began med school in the ’80s, she was instructed to distance herself from her patients, and in particular to suppress any feelings she might have about the terminals ones. Although dedicated to her craft, she found it difficult to become so emotionally removed . In her wildly well received new book Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality, Chen defies her med school instructors and talks about, in great detail, the death of her patients and how it made her feel as a physician. Tonight, Chen speaks about her book at a 7 p.m. appearance at the Schwartz Bookshop in Shorewood.