This was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, losing to Design For Death. There will be mild spoilers ahead:
This is about what it takes to become a doctor. This is basically a documentary, even though actors were used to go through the actions seen on screen in many instances. For example, the doctor who is followed from med school through his first job, Dr. Michael Kenneth Williams, is played by an actor.
There's no dialog, as everything is conveyed through voice-over narration. We first see Williams as he arrives, fresh from graduating with a B.S., to Columbia School of Medicine. The narration goes into the kinds of subjects Williams and other hopeful candidates to earn an M.D. will need as they progress. Initially, Williams has no specific discipline he's interested in, then he decides on pediatrics.
Next is an internship at Cornell, at a teaching hospital. There, he learns hands on the skills he needs to pursue his chosen field. He decides there that, while he still wants to work with children, straight pediatrics is more limited than he wants. An encounter with a patient with diphtheria clinches it for him and so it's back to school (Johns Hopkins this time) to study epidemiology.
During his studies there, an outbreak of diphtheria occurs in Baltimore and Williams volunteers to be part of the medical team trying to find the source as well as treat those already ill and vaccinate those still free from the disease in order to check its spread. Their campaign is ultimately successful and Williams is now certain he's found his path.
As I watched this, it struck me that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The diseases may change, but the basic problems remain. Poor people with inadequate access to health care are the ones still most at risk, whether it's diphtheria in 1947 or Lyme Disease or MERS in 2015. Today, it's also antibiotic-resistant strains of pneumonia, influenza and so on. Though much of this is dated, it also still holds true in some cases.
This is available online and is worth tracking down if you're interested in the subject.
This is about what it takes to become a doctor. This is basically a documentary, even though actors were used to go through the actions seen on screen in many instances. For example, the doctor who is followed from med school through his first job, Dr. Michael Kenneth Williams, is played by an actor.
There's no dialog, as everything is conveyed through voice-over narration. We first see Williams as he arrives, fresh from graduating with a B.S., to Columbia School of Medicine. The narration goes into the kinds of subjects Williams and other hopeful candidates to earn an M.D. will need as they progress. Initially, Williams has no specific discipline he's interested in, then he decides on pediatrics.
Next is an internship at Cornell, at a teaching hospital. There, he learns hands on the skills he needs to pursue his chosen field. He decides there that, while he still wants to work with children, straight pediatrics is more limited than he wants. An encounter with a patient with diphtheria clinches it for him and so it's back to school (Johns Hopkins this time) to study epidemiology.
During his studies there, an outbreak of diphtheria occurs in Baltimore and Williams volunteers to be part of the medical team trying to find the source as well as treat those already ill and vaccinate those still free from the disease in order to check its spread. Their campaign is ultimately successful and Williams is now certain he's found his path.
As I watched this, it struck me that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The diseases may change, but the basic problems remain. Poor people with inadequate access to health care are the ones still most at risk, whether it's diphtheria in 1947 or Lyme Disease or MERS in 2015. Today, it's also antibiotic-resistant strains of pneumonia, influenza and so on. Though much of this is dated, it also still holds true in some cases.
This is available online and is worth tracking down if you're interested in the subject.
