“Moments in Medicine at Michigan” is a new feature that will appear from time to time as a way of providing readers with a thoughtful glimpse into the lives and perspectives of representatives of the remarkable group of young men and women who make up the student body of the Medical School today. Many of the first interviews, including this one of Karen Fauman, were conducted by Danielle Turner when she was a student intern in the office of the editor of Medicine at Michigan. Turner herself, who appears on the cover of this issue, will begin her own medical studies at Michigan in the fall.

Karen Fauman is a first-year
Inteflex student in the Medical School
and a U-M graduate in theater and drama.

“I went into theater knowing that I wanted eventually to become a physician. At first I thought they were separate interests, but as I studied theater, I found a lot of connections between that part of myself and the reasons I wanted to do medicine. Being in theater, I spent a lot of time learning about the ways people present themselves, the way body language can speak a thousand times more powerfully than words. I would be in an acting class where ‘anything goes,’ and all the awkwardness associated with not knowing someone or being in unfamiliar territory would just disappear. I appreciate the importance of science in medicine, but I think my practice will have less to do with science and more to do with interacting. You can be the greatest scientist in the world, but if you can’t make a patient comfortable enough to tell you about their personal life, about a drug habit, about their sexuality, well, then, you aren’t doing that patient a whole lot of good, no matter how well you did on your biochemistry final.”