Beyond Challenges

Book excerpt: Doctors are ordinary people who experience challenges and failures just like everyone. This short must-read book offers the reader stories and sound advice on how regular women struggled with failure and rejection to finally succeed in medicine. At the core of this book are lessons on resilience, faith, determination and persistence told by 15 immigrant African women who dared to dream in the face of different challenges in order to answer the physician's call in faraway America.Born and raised in parts of the African continent where for many, hardship is commonplace and opportunities few, these women were as fearless as they were bold in pursuing their dreams. Their career aspirations would be enwrapped in different journeys characterized by years of rejection and failure in Africa, the Caribbean Islands, and the United States where some would eventually join the ranks of life-saving physicians and others, rejected but ever hopeful residency applicants.Recounts of the challenges common to the 21st-century woman on finding love, interracial dating in a racially charged society, heartbreak, divorce, single parenthood, acculturation, managing life-changing illnesses and successfully balancing family life and career aspirations, are as many as the tales of the academic and career challenges experienced by these women, further exacerbated by being women, immigrants and racial minorities.The stories are different and the experiences unique; but they all have the common result of demystifying medicine and echo recurrent lessons of resilience, strength, unwavering faith, resolve, and the tenacity that is needed to soar beyond challenges.