Friday, April 10, 2009

Doctor's Diaries - Cheryl Dorsey

From the Echoing Green blog, I was led to this programme on the PBS website. Doctors' Diaries has followed seven Harvard Medical School students over the last 21 years (This is in the same tradition as the Seven Up series, which followed a set of children from the age of 7 years and re-visited them every 7 years after that.)

I have only watched one of the videos: the one following Cheryl Dorsey from her time as a fresh-faced med student. Cheryl Dorsey is now president of Echoing Green, which funds start-up social innovations. In fact, she was an Echoing Green fellow in 1992 for her idea, the Family Van, which was a community-based mobile health unit that provided basic health care and outreach services to at-risk residents of inner-city Boston neighborhoods.

It is fascinating for me to see her path veer from an initial plan to specialise in pediatrics to her current position managing one of the biggest social entrepreneurship funding organisations, because I am very interested in learning how people got to do what they are doing now - especially if their current position is polar opposite from their starting point.

2 comments:

NneomaMD said...

yeah, i was looking forward to catching her story this past Tuesday but had a conflict in schedule. i guess i will have to check the website either for rerun dates or how to get copies. these days there are whole blogs, books and website dedicated to alternative pathways for recent med school grads. its takes alot to veer off the well beaten path.

Ore said...

Nneoma, you can watch the first part on the PBS website: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/program.html and the 2nd part is on Tuesday, Apr 14.

It does take a lot to make unconventional choices, however I know an increasing number of people doing something very different from what they studied and it's not always because they couldn't get a job in their field of study. I like seeing this type of flexibility and non-linear way of thinking.

What are you studying, btw?