Michele Harper on the calling to work in ER

 
 
 

The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Michele Harper on the calling to work in ER

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Michele Harper's career as a physician is a true vocation - the result, she says, of a childhood spent with an abusive father. In this conversation, we talk about the nature of her calling to help, and her experience of racism in the workplace, where she has found herself both on the receiving end, and taking the role as a defender of her Black patients. Underlying it all is a mission to bring about change.

 
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Show Notes

Michele Harper's career as a physician is a true vocation - the result, she says, of a childhood spent with an abusive father. In this conversation, we talk about the nature of her calling to help, and her experience of racism in the workplace, where she has found herself both on the receiving end, and taking the role as a defender of her Black patients. Underlying it all is a mission to bring about change.

Michele Harper has worked as an emergency room physician for more than a decade at various institutions, including as chief resident at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and in the emergency department at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia. She is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. The Beauty in Breaking is her first book.

We talk about:

  • Working as an ER physician

  • Surviving childhood abuse

  • Being called to be a helper

  • Experiencing racism in the workplace

Links from this episode:

To keep up to date with The Wintering Sessions, follow Katherine on Twitter, Instagram and Substack

For information on Katherine’s online writing courses, including her programme Wintering for Writers, visit True Stories Writing School 

 
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Wintering is out now in the UK, and the US.

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