HARPER: Oh, yeah, all the time. HARPER: So she was there for medical clearance. THE BEAUTY IN BREAKING (Riverhead, 280 pp., $27) is the riveting, heartbreaking, sometimes difficult, always inspiring story of how she made this happen. While she waited for John, she took in the scene in the emergency room: an old man napping, a young man waiting for a ride home, a father rushing through sliding doors with his little girl in his arms. (SOUNDBITE OF RHYTHM FUTURE QUARTET'S "IBERIAN SUNRISE"), DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Dr. Michele Harper. I support the baby as she takes her first breath outside her mother . And I was - the only rescue would be one that I could manage for myself. But, and perhaps most critically, people have to be held accountable when it comes to racism. Los Angeles. We'll continue our conversation in just a moment. . During our first virtual event of 2021, the ER doctor and best-selling author shared what it means to breakand to healon the frontlines of medicine. It is not graphic, but it is in some respects troubling. His office is not accepting new patients. And they get better. She really didn't know anything about medicine. Our mission is to get Southern California reading and talking. And they were summoned, probably, a couple of times. And usually, it's safe. And we use the same one. It certainly has an emotional toll. It is the responsibility of everyone in the department. Harper shares her poignant stories from the ER with Mitchell Kaplan. She was being sexually harassed at work and the customers treated her horribly. Dr. Michele Harper is a New Jersey-based emergency room physician whose memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, is available now. You want to just describe what happened with this baby? She was a Black patient. At first glance, this memoir by a sexual assault survivor may not appear to have much in common with The Beauty in Breaking. But the cover of Chanel Millers book was inspired by the Japanese art of kintsukuroi, where broken pottery is repaired by filling the cracks with gold, silver or platinum. But I just left it. DAVIES: Eventually, your father did leave the family. Her X-ray was pretty much OK. Recorded in Miami and Philadelphia. Usually I read to escape. Dr. Michele Harper is a New Jersey-based emergency room physician whose memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, is available now. This is FRESH AIR. Make an appointment by calling (302)644-8880. My boss stance was, "Well, we can't have this, we want to make her happy because she works here." HARPER: There are times and it's really difficult because we want to know. (SOUNDBITE OF THE ADAM PRICE GROUP'S "STORYVILLE"). Dr. Michele Harper, a New Jersey-based emergency room physician, has over a decade's experience in the ER. Photo: LaTosha Oglesby. The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir. Often, a medical work environment can be traumatic for people (and specifically women) of color. Residency/Fellowship. Heather John Fogarty is a Los Angeles writer whose work is anthologized in Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing and by Joan Didions Light. She teaches journalism at USC Annenberg. And so it was a long conversation about her experiences because for me in that moment, I - and why I stayed was it was important for me to hear her. Weve bought into a collective delusion that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. Apparently, Dr. Michele Sharkey has found love with none other than the brother of a fellow coworker, Dr. Emily Thomas. This will be a lifetime work, though. DAVIES: You described in the piece that you wrote about the mask that you wore over your face. So the police just left. We need to support our essential workers, which means having a living wage, affordable housing, sick leave and healthcare. But the shortages remain. They stayed together . June 11, 2021 10:14 AM PT. And it's not just her. In a new memoir, Dr. Michele Harper writes about treating gunshot wounds, discovering evidence of child abuse and drawing courage from her patients as she's struggled to overcome her own trauma. Michele Harper is a graduate of Harvard University and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. So the experiences that would apply did apply. (An emergency room is a great equalizer, but only to an extent.) Dr. Michele Harper sheds light on how the coronavirus pandemic has affected health care workers and the virus's impact on vulnerable populations, and discuss. The end of her marriage brought the beginning of her self-healing. So what was different about Dominic was that he's dark-skinned, he's Black and that he was with the police. They have 28 years of experience. At that point, at that time of the day, I was the only Black attending physician, and the police were white. Then I started the medical path, and it beat the words out of me. My being there with them in the moment did force me to be honest with myself about - that's why it was so painful for the marriage to end. When we do experience racism, they often don't get it and may even hold us accountable for it. She is affiliated with Saint Francis Medical Center. Michele Harper, The Beauty in Breaking. And I remember thinking to myself, what could lead a person to do something so brutal to a family member? DAVIES: The resident in this case who sought to go over your head and consult with the hospital's legal department - did you continue to work with her? DAVIES: I don't want to dwell on this too much. 119 posts. What's it like not to have follow-up, not to know what became of these folks? And as we know from history, this is a lifetime commitment to structural change. ( 2014-04-12) Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet is an American television series on Nat Geo Wild. And he apologized because he said that unfortunately, this is what always happens in this hospital - that the hospital won't promote women or people of color. He said it wasn't true. As Harper remembers it, The whole gamut of life seemed to be converging in this space., She decided she wanted to become an emergency room doctor because unlike in the war zone that was my childhood, I would be in control of that space, providing relief or at least a reprieve to those who called out for help.. Published on July 7, 2020 05:41 PM. Michele Harper is a female African American emergency room physician in an overwhelmingly male and white profession. Read an excerpt from chapter 1: With the final DC home, house number three, we had arrived on the "Gold Coast.". That's an important point. . But I think there's something in this book about what you get out of treating these patients, the insight of this center of emergency medicine that you talk about. It wasn't about me. My director's initial response was just, "Well, you should be able to somehow handle it anyway. That is not acceptable, and yet these situations happen constantly. DAVIES: You know, you write in the book that you navigate an American landscape that claims to be post-racial when every waking moment reveals the contrary. And so we're all just bracing to see what happens this fall. micheleharpermd. So you do the best you can while you try to gain some comfort with the uncertainty of it all. Like any workplace, medicine has a hierarchy but people of color and women are usually undermined. So I explained to her the course of treatment and she just continued to bark orders at me. And you wrote that before the recent protests and demonstrations, which have prompted a lot more focus on the nation's experience with slavery and racial injustice. If we had more people in medicine from poor or otherwise disenfranchised backgrounds, we would have better physicians, physicians who could empathize more. About Elise Michelle Harper, MD. You were the attending person who was actually her supervisor, but she thought she could take this into her own hands. Is it my sole responsibility to do that? They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the . While she waited for her brother she watched and marveled as injured patients were rushed in for treatment, while others left healed. In her first book, "The Beauty in Breaking," Dr. Harper tells a tale of empathy, overcoming prejudice, and learning to heal herself by healing others. The following review first appeared in The DO magazine. DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Dr. Michele Harper. If the patient doesn't want the evaluation, we do it anyway. You say that this center has the sturdy roots of insight that, in their grounding, offer nourishment that can lead to lives of ever-increasing growth. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. This summer, Im reading to learn. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Original network. I'm wondering if nowadays things feel any different to you in hospital settings and the conversations that you're having, the sensibilities of people around you. And so that has allowed us to keep having masks. You know, the dynamics are interesting there. You got into Harvard, did well there and went to medical school. They have no role in a febrile seizure. It's called "The Beauty In Breaking.". . That has inspired her to challenge a system that she says regards healthcare providers as more disposable than their protective equipment. Then, thankfully, my father then left for a little bit also. She spent more than a decade as an emergency room physician. It was me connecting with her. There's another moment in the book where you talk about having tried to resuscitate a baby who was brought in who died. So we reuse it over and over again. He refuses an examination; after a brief conversation in which it seems as if they are the only two people in the crowded triage area, she agrees (against the wishes of the officers and a colleague) to discharge him. She is an emergency room physician, and she has a new memoir about her experiences. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn . And, you know, of note, Dominic, the patient, and I were the two darkest-skinned people in the department. And the consensus in the ER at the time was, well, of course, that is what we're supposed to do. You know, hopefully, one day we can do something different. She went on to attend Harvard, where she met her husband. Michele Harper, thanks so much for being here. Dr. Harper received her BA in Psychology from Harvard University . HARPER: The change is that we've had donations. I mean, I've literally had patients who are having heart attacks - and these are cases where we know, medically, for a fact, they are at risk of significant injury or death, where it's documented - I mean, much clearer cut than the case we just discussed, and they have the right - if they are competent, they have the right to sign themselves out of the department and refuse care. Michele Harper writes: I am the doctor whose palms bolster the head of the 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound to his brain. ABOUT THE PROVIDER. To help combat systemic racism, consider learning from or donating to these organizations: Campaign Zero (joincampaignzero.org) which works to end police brutality in America through research-proven strategies. Dr. Michelle Harper, a New York Times Bestselling Author and Harvard graduate, will be the focus of a Monday, August 22 virtual interview with East Baton Rouge Parish (EBR) readers, and EBR . DAVIES: You know, I'm wondering if the fact that you spent so much of your childhood in a place where you didn't feel safe and there was no adult or professional that you encountered who could relieve that, who could rescue you, who could make you safe, do you think that that in some way made you a more empathetic doctor, somebody who is more inclined to find that person who is in need of help that they somehow can't quite identify or ask for? We want to know if the patient's OK, if they made it. She was young. DAVIES: What was going on when you - what made you call that time? Of the doctors and nurses on duty, I was the only Black person. As we are hopefully coming out of the pandemic, after people stopped clapping for us at dusk, were at a state where a lot of [intensive care unit] providers are out of work. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia when he told her he couldn't . She went on to work at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx and the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Philadelphia. The emergency room is a place of intensitya place of noise and colors and human drama. There were other popular employees like Dr. Sandra Wisniewski and Dr. Elizabeth Grammar who also left the show. D.C., in a complicated family, she attended Harvard, where she met her husband. So it was a natural fit for me. In this summer of protest and pain, perhaps most telling is Harpers encounter with a handcuffed Black man brought into the emergency room by four white police officers (like rolling in military tanks to secure a small-town demonstration). And she called the hospital medical legal team to see if that was OK and if somehow she could go over me - because she felt that she was entitled to do so - to get done what the police wanted done. DAVIES: We're going to take another break here. Penguin Publishing. And you said that when you went home, you cried. So he would - when he was big enough, he would intervene and try and protect my mother. What I see is that certain patients are not protected and honored; its often patients who are people of color, immigrants who don't speak English, women, and the poor. I kept thinking, This is absurd. Part of me was laughing inside because she thought she could be so ignorant and inappropriate. HARPER: First of all, shout out to Lincoln and Lincoln residency because that was one of - professionally, that was one of the most rewarding times of my education and career. On the other hand, it makes the work easier just to be the best doctor you can and not get the follow-up. HARPER: Yes. Written By Dr. Joan Naidorf. You can find out more and change our default settings with Cookies Settings. And I remember thinking - and it was a deep bite. But, you know, I'm a professional, so I just move on and treat her professionally each shift. Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. And there was no pneumonia. Summary. As for sex, about 35.8% were female.]. I mean, was it difficult? Brought up in Washington, D.C., in a complicated family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. I could wrap this up in 10 minutes, and then I could go home. Michele's husband, Dr. Martin MacNeill, had withheld decades of secrets from his family - from mistresses and falsified transcripts to a hidden felony conviction - a history that bolstered the . DAVIES: You know, you write in the very beginning of the book, in describing what the book is about, that you want to take us into the chaos of emergency medicine and show us where the center is. But I was really concerned that this child had been beaten and was having traumatic brain injury and that's why she wasn't waking up. 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