No Apparent Distress: A Doctor's Coming of Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine

A brutally frank memoir about doctors and patients in a health care system that puts the poor at risk.

No Apparent Distress begins with a mistake made by a white medical student that may have hastened the death of a working-class black man who sought care in a student-run clinic. Haunted by this error, the author―herself from a working-class background―delves into the stories and politics of a medical training system in which students learn on the bodies of the poor. Part confession, part family history, No Apparent Distress is at once an indictment of American health care and a deeply moving tale of one doctor’s coming-of-age.

Rachel Pearson, MD, PhD, is a resident physician who also holds a PhD from the Institute for the Medical Humanities. Her writing has appeared in Scientific American, the Guardian, the Texas Observer, and the New York Times Book Review.