Dr. Jen Baker-Porazinski is a doctor, a family practitioner in Washington County, New York. She is also a student in my writing class, which met this morning, and she has turned to writing to help her sort out her intense and complex feelings about practicing health care in America. Her writing is clear, powerful,  and revealing.

She first came into my writing class several years ago, when she was wondering if she could write about medicine from a frustrated doctor’s point of view. She no longer wonders, she is writing and writing.

When she writes about healing, you get the feeling that if she were designing our health care system, it would have great meaning and compassion and connection, as most doctors intend when they enter a system that everyone knows is out of control and pleasing to almost no one.

Jen sees more than 20 patients a day, she has little time to spend with any of them, she is practices conventional medicine, and is also exploring alternative medicine. She is kind and intuitive and committed her patients, she wishes she could make them happier and healthier and spent more time with them. She is also struggling to be the kind of doctor she always wanted to be in a system that seems sometimes to serve  no one but insurance companies and pharmaceuticals.

Jen is chronicling her journey through through the world of medicine through the eyes of a caring and loving physician.  It is mesmerizing.

All of us in the class are in awe of the work she is doing, and are offering the best insights and encouragement that we can. Jen is a listener and a learner, doctors are often accused of arrogance and detachment, Jen is never arrogant and connects very easily with people. She listens and learns.

I hope her writing turns into a book, I think everyone who brushes against the health care system – patients and doctors – would benefit from it, and I am grateful Jen has come into my class and is so committed to her very powerful writing. Doctors are human beings, too, very much so. It’s easy to forget that on the other side of the white coat.

I know she is a fine doctor, she is a fine writer and wife and mother as well. She enriches our writing class.