La Clínica: A Doctor's Journey Across Borders

by David P. Sklar

Overview

In 1972, when the world around him was making little sense, David Sklar left in his senior year of college to volunteer at a community clinic in rural Mexico. With absolutely no medical experience beyond being accepted to medical school at Stanford, Sklar literally learned medicine by practicing it. With duties that ranged from suturing wounds and delivering babies to digging latrines to pulling teeth, his time at the clinic took him into the heart of a medical world that the sterilized walls of the twentieth century would never have shown him. The experience challenged his idealism and, ultimately, molded him into a skilled emergency physician.

Years later, deeply immersed in the stress of running the ER at the University of New Mexico Hospital and facing a divorce, Sklar decided to revisit the Mexican village and clinic that provided inspiration and grounding in the early stages of his career. Weaving together his time in Mexico, his later career, and his marriage, Sklar's memoir offers a thought-provoking meditation on the virtues of idealism in the face of the inevitable failures that haunt all human endeavors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826345264
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	01/15/2010
Series:	Literature and Medicine Series
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David P. Sklar is associate dean of graduate medical education at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and he served for many years as the chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at UNM Health Sciences Center. This is his first book.