SOLO PRACTICE: A Woman Surgeon's Story

In this fine, inspiriting sequel to The Making of a Woman Surgeon (1980), Morgan chronicles her shaky first year in private practice. Deciding to go it alone after completing a seven-year residency (rather than joining an established group, or teaching), Morgan returned from the Midwest to her home town of Washington, D.C., opened a brand new office--and made a thoroughly rotten start. Within a few months she was overloaded with patients, exhausted from doing extra emergency work in area hospitals, unhappily involved with a neurotic boyfriend, worried about her gravely ill mother, and terrified by the rigorous approaching exam for board certification as a plastic surgeon. Happily, she worked it all out: temporarily closing her office, she coaxed her mother back to health, got rid of the boyfriend, passed the boards--and then started all over again with the admirable resolve never to be too busy to talk to and counsel every patient she sees. Morgan found plenty of humor in the process, and passes it on effectively--from outwitting scornful equipment salesmen (she had her stockbroker brother pose as the surgeon--and haggle the prices down), to escaping from a patient who wanted plastic surgery to make him resemble John Lennon. There are lots of other case histories to keep readers in thrall. Among them: an 80-year-old Vietnamese woman in need of leg surgery for severe Napalm bum scarring, and a Tennessee man requiring facial reconstruction after his wife intentionally drove a pickup truck over his head. A thoroughly entertaining and involving look at what confronts the naive new physician.