Several days ago, I attended a medical meeting in which Sandeep Jauhar was a guest speaker. I had recently finished reading his book, and was excited to have the opportunity to meet an author. A real book author! As fate had allowed, I ended up getting an autographed copy of Intern, and got to be in a picture with him! I felt like the kid in Slumdog Millionaire who dived through the bottom of a latrine in order to get a celebrity’s autograph.

The irony is that if I were a medical resident at LIJ, I’d see him every day in rounds at the cardiac unit. He would have been no different from any other teaching attending, prodding residents rationalize their medical decisions. Would this guy still hold celebrity status in my book? How is this guy any different from Gerald Appel, Richard Axel, or Eric Kandel?

He isn’t. Each one of these people has his own celebrity factor.  All of them are book authors. Axel and Kandel are Nobel Prize winners, and Appel cares for high profile people. Jauhar writes guest columns for NYT and NEJM. The bottom line is that I have his autograph and photo. Coolness.

medicine life, medicine