Pauline W. Chen, Doctor of Medicine, is a Taiwanese American surgeon, author, and New York Times columnist.
Education
Chen graduated from The Loomis Chaffee School, then attended and the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. She completed her general surgical training at Yale University, the National Cancer Institute, and University of California, Los Los Angeles She was appointed faculty at University of California, Los Angeles, specializing in liver and kidney transplants and the treatment of cancer.
Career
She is known for her 2007 book Final Exam: A Surgeon"s Reflections on Mortality as well as her online column Doctor and Patient. Her parents are immigrants from Taiwan. Through her practice as a transplant surgeon and her experiences of dealing with terminally ill patients, Doctor Chen came to understand that, commonly, doctors consider a patient’s death as a sign of imperfect care and thus a personal failure.
And doctors hate to fail.
Doctors strive to combat their patients’ sicknesses, but if the battle starts to become a losing one then doctors do not prepare their patients for inevitable death. Instead, the battle for life and denial of death continues with the frequent result that many patients die in a hospitals Intensive Care Unit while under-going painful treatment rather than at home with pain-management and in peace.
Doctor Chen wants to change this practice.*.