Clinical Pathology

Abstract

Dr. H. is a 27-year-old third-year pathology resident. He has been married for six months to a lab technician. She is a native in the city, but he had migrated east from Wisconsin, where he went to school. He has a quick, boyish smile and, in fact, appears several years younger than his stated age. He was very casually dressed in a plain sport shirt, chinos, and scuffed loafers—all topped off with a thick, shiny helmet of blue-black hair. As he became involved in the flow of the interview, he smiled much less frequently and grew more intense, expounding with almost no prompting on a variety of subjects related to his choice of specialty and to his particular training program. At these points in the interview, his facial expression changed, and his image emerged as more mature, more age-appropriate.