PAULINE W. CHEN
Wednesday, February 7 at 7:30 p.m.

Liver transplant surgeon Pauline Chen reflects on her development as a physician and her own changing attitudes towards the dying in her extraordinary new memoir, Final Exam: A Young Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality (Knopf). The product of an East coast Taiwanese American family, and Harvard and Northwestern Universities, Dr. Chen draws from her profession's culture (and shortcomings, including her own) in weaving a story about the preservation of human dignity and of medicine's slow evolution. "...A series of thoughtful, moving essays on the troubled relationship between modern medical practice and the emotional events surrounding death...Old ways die hard, and technology-driven medicine, in a strange way, impels doctors to deny death as they apply heroic means to defeat it. Her most hopeful argument is herself: a doctor open to confronting her own fears and doubts, and willing to prepare her patients for the final exam." - The New York Times. Also to check out is Pauline Chen's blog at www.paulinechen.com.

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