Can an otolaryngologist write a best-selling book? Absolutely. Parent Nation, the latest book by Dana Suskind, MD, is billed as an instant New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller. After Kilimanjaro, a novel by Gayle Woodson, MD, is an American Fiction Award winner.
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July 2022Here, we spoke to six otolaryngologists who shared their paths to publication as well as tips and encouragement for would-be authors.
Bruce Campbell, MD
Author, A Fullness of Uncertain Significance: Stories of Surgery, Clarity, & Grace
Professor, Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences, Medical College of Wisconsin
Retired head and neck surgeon
“The process of haphazardly pouring words onto a page—and then sorting through them to make some sense of things—has enriched my life,” Dr. Campbell wrote in introduction to his book, A Fullness of Uncertain Significance.
Dr. Campbell began writing more than three decades ago, shortly after starting his medical practice. “I was 32 years old, and all of a sudden I had these patients who were my responsibility,” he said. “I didn’t really have anybody to talk to—I was the only one at my institution doing what I do—so I’d go home and write about it.”
The process of writing helped him see connections and “made me a better doctor,” he said. He seized opportunities to integrate medicine and writing, authoring newsletters, blog posts, essays, poetry, and fiction in publications ranging from the Journal of Clinical Oncology and JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery to The Examined Life: A Literary Journal of the Carver College of Medicine and Creative Wisconsin.
Fascinated by the power of storytelling, Dr. Campbell earned a Certification of Professional Achievement in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University in 2019. He now includes narrative medicine techniques when he teaches medical students, encouraging them to create written reflections on clinical encounters. “Writing helps them digest and understand not only what that experience meant to the patient, but what it meant to them,” he says.
Read more: www.BruceCampbellMD.com
Dana Suskind, MD
Author, Parent Nation: Unlocking Every Child’s Potential, Fulfilling Society’s Promise and Thirty Million Words: Building a Child’s Brain
Director, University of Chicago Medicine Pediatric Hearing Loss and Cochlear Implant program
Founder and co-director, TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health
As a pediatric otolaryngologist specializing in cochlear implantation, Dr. Suskind was bothered by “huge disparities in outcomes.” She started delving into the root causes of those disparities and learned that human conversation is incredibly important for brain development. Convinced that child health might improve dramatically if parents, caregivers, and others understood exactly how to build children’s brains via conversation and interaction, Dr. Suskind published her first book, Thirty Million Words, in 2015.
The book was a bestseller that taught parents to “tune in,” “talk more,” and “take turns,” but its publication didn’t result in widespread change. (The idea of a word gap comes from a 1995 study by Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, which was found to be problematic in its research and design; Dr. Suskind, in a Brookings Institution 2019 article, acknowledged this but credited the study with “helping me—and many others—begin to understand not just the role of language in child development, but the power of parents and environments to help shape child development in profound ways.”)
Social determinants of health affect parents’ ability to interact with their kids, so Dr. Suskind worked with experienced science journalist Lydia Denworth to publish her second book, Parent Nation, earlier this year. Publisher’s Weekly says Parent Nation “makes an impassioned case for family-focused policy to support brain development in young children,” and the book and its ideas have been shared in Scientific American, NPR’s Planet Money, and Good Housekeeping.
Dr. Suskind encourages other physicians to pick up the pen. “So often we keep things in the academic sphere when those ideas are supposed to be doing good out in the real world,” she said. “My work as a social scientist and an author really came out of my work in the operating room. One of the most powerful ways to share the science is through parent and family stories.”
Read more: www.ParentNation.org
Gayle Woodson, MD
Author, After Kilimanjaro and Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders for Primary Care Providers
Professor Emerita and Former Chair of Otolaryngology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
Visiting Professor, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Tanzania
Dr. Woodson, one of the inaugural members of The American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and Foundation’s Hall of Distinction, didn’t initially intend to become a physician. “I thought I was going to be a writer when I went to college,” she said. It was the late 1960s, and medicine wasn’t considered a suitable career for women. Writing, on the other hand, “was something a housewife could do.”
Meeting a female pediatrician changed the course of her life. Dr. Woodson subspecialized in laryngology, building her career and eventually serving as president of the American Laryngological Association from 2006 to 2007 and the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery from 2014 to 2015.
She published her first book, Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders for Primary Care Providers, in 2000. In 2004, she and her husband, Tom Robbins, MD, traveled to Tanzania to teach at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center; the duo returned many times in subsequent years and helped build an otolaryngology program in Moshi, Tanzania.
The sights, sounds, and smells of Tanzania are the backdrop for Dr. Woodson’s hybrid-published novel, After Kilimanjaro, which came out in 2019. It tells the story of a burned-out female surgeon who travels to the country to study maternal mortality and is forever changed by her experience.
“It’s easier to write about things that you know,” Dr. Woodson said, noting that the book also highlights medical issues she cares about deeply, including maternal outcomes, women’s health, and female genital mutilation. “If you write an article in a professional journal, you’re essentially preaching to the choir of people who already think about these things. If you slip it into a book, you have an opportunity to educate a different population,” Dr. Woodson said.
She’s currently finishing her second novel, Leaving La Jolla. The book’s protagonist is a widowed physician who returns to her West Texas hometown with her children and must reckon with the impact of the opioid crisis.
“Writing is so fulfilling because you’re creating something,” Dr. Woodson said, “and you have a chance to share things that you think are important.”
Read more: www.gaylewoodson.com
Julie Wei, MD
Author, A Healthier Wei: Reclaiming Health for Misdiagnosed & Overmedicated Children Co-author, Acid Reflux in Children: How Healthy Eating Can Fix Your Child’s Asthma, Allergies, Obesity, Nasal Congestion, Cough & Croup
President, American Society of Pediatric Otolaryngology
Professor, Otolaryngology–Head Neck Surgery; Chair of Otolaryngology Education, University of Central Florida College of Medicine
“My calling in this universe is to be the best doctor I can be,” said Dr. Wei, which is why she empowers families via the written word.
Early in her career, Dr. Wei realized that she was spending a lot of time in the clinic educating families about health and nutrition. Many of her young patients were on multiple medications but still suffered from chronic cough, runny nose, and allergy-like symptoms. Dr. Wei thought back to her childhood in Taiwan: “My mother went first to the market and kitchen if I was sick. Like most women from my native country, she knew that what goes in the mouth comes out in the health.”
Those words became the first line of Dr. Wei’s first book, A Healthier Wei: Reclaiming Health for Misdiagnosed & Overmedicated Children. The book, which she self-published in 2012, draws on Dr. Wei’s medical education, clinical experience, and cultural heritage; her sister, Nancy Wei, a registered dietician, also helped with the book.
“The reason why I decided to write a book for the public, to be honest, was because any time I’d write a paper related to diet or lifestyle, it was rejected,” Dr. Wei said. “It was really important to me that I give parents an option.”
Dr. Wei invested thousands of dollars—and likely thousands of hours—writing, designing, and publishing the book. She also built a consumer-facing website, www.drjuliewei.com, which she revamped in 2018 to include online courses for parents. “There is significant joy in being able to create content for the public,” she said.
Dr. Wei is currently looking for an agent for her next book, which will be about physician well-being. “I’m going to make you think,” Dr. Wei said, “and push the status quo.”
Read more: www.drjuliewei.com
Tali Lando, MD
Author, Hell & Back: Wife & Mother, Doctor & Patient, Dragon Slayer
Pediatric otolaryngologist, Westchester Medical Center Health Network
Dr. Lando always wanted to write a book, but she never dreamed it would be about breast cancer. Life provided the plot.
It was 2013, and Dr. Lando had only recently returned to work after the premature birth and subsequent neonatal ICU stay of her third child. On the eve of her father’s scheduled brain tumor surgery, Dr. Lando felt a lump in her breast. The diagnosis: breast cancer, stage IIIA. Suddenly, the pediatric otolaryngologist was an oncology patient.
To cope, she turned to the written word. “All of these weird, darkly humorous things would happen, so I started to write down vignettes of experiences,” Dr. Lando said. “I figured if I didn’t know what happens after radiation and lymph node dissection in terms of your ability to shave your armpit—you can’t get in there ‘cause it’s like a deep cave – then other people probably don’t know that either.”
Writing became a lifeline for her. “Once I wasn’t working as a physician anymore, taking care of patients, I didn’t feel like I had a purpose, Dr. Lando said. “Writing gave me a sense that I was doing something.”
She initially shared her stories with friends, and then decided to write a book with short, easily digestible chapters. “I envisioned it like a coffee table book for the oncology waiting room,” she said. The book was only partly written when she returned to work following successful cancer treatment. She eventually finished and self-published the book after realizing how difficult it can be to interest an agent and traditional publishing house.
Hell & Back was released in 2018. Sales have been slower than she’d like—and promotion has been much more work—but publishing a book has led to some “amazing experiences,” she said, including dozens of public speaking engagements.
“I got to do something I dreamed about,” she said. “Writing was a great outlet for me.”
Read more: www.drtaliaronoff.com
Nina Shapiro, MD
Author, The Ultimate Kids’ Guide to Being Super Healthy: What You Need to Know About Nutrition, Exercise, Sleep, Hygiene, Stress, Screen Time, and More; Hype: A Doctor’s Guide to Medical Myths, Exaggerated Claims, and Bad Advice – How to Tell What’s Real and What’s Not; and Take a Deep Breath: Clean Air for the Health of Your Child
Director, Pediatric Ear, Nose, and Throat at the Mattel Children’s Hospital, UCLA
Dr. Shapiro’s path to publication is particularly unique: She honed her direct-to-consumer communication skills by appearing on TV shows such as The Doctors.
“As a clinician, I felt that I was discussing certain issues every day, all day, and thought it would be great if people had this information at their fingertips,” Dr. Shapiro said. “That’s how my first book, Take a Deep Breath, came to be.”
A book about airway health and ear, nose, and throat conditions in children isn’t a huge stretch for a pediatric otolaryngologist. Dr. Shapiro’s next book, though, was a bit of a reach. Hype, published in 2018, helps consumers recognize medical misinformation. “To this day, I get a lot of feedback—much of it negative—from the public about that book,” Dr. Shapiro said.
Her third book, The Ultimate Kids’ Guide to Being Super Healthy, published in 2021, is colorful, kid-friendly, and aimed at children ages six to 10. “I’ve found that the more you acknowledge what a child is going through and empower them, the better off they’ll be,” she said.
How has she managed to write three books while maintaining a clinical and academic career? Commitment. “Nights, weekends, and then there’s all that extra turnover time we get doing short surgeries,” she explained. “If you do 10 surgeries in a day and you get 20 minutes between each surgery, you have a couple of hours to do some writing.”
“You never know where book writing is going to take you,” she added. “And that’s really exciting. There’s a big world out there that’s interested in what we have to say.”
Jennifer Fink is a freelance medical writer based in Wisconsin.