Reviews, Articles and Interviews
Reviews
JAMA - May 18, 2011:
Rural medicine is quite unlike that depicted in the painting hanging on the wall of the South Dakota community hospital where I practice. In that painting, a country doctor's horse and buggy stand outside a warmly lit farmhouse. Next to the house is an idyllic pond, with a formation of wild geese framing the sunset, and the viewer can easily imagine that the physician is inside delivering the perfect baby.
This false picture of rural medicine is rubbed out as the reader progresses through the diverse museum of short stories, essays, and poems captured within the pages of The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader. Like a fine-arts master, editor Therese Zink brings experiences and viewpoints from the folks living, surviving, and providing health care in less populated areas of this country.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/19/2015.2.extract
Download PDF of JAMA article
Family Medicine - March 2012:
As Erik Brodt, one of the contributing authors, says in Learning to Walk the Healer’s Path, "I grew up rural, but I never realized the challenges of providing care to a close-knit community until I lived it from a provider perspective." Having grown up in a town of 800 people, I experienced life in a poor rural community without medical providers. Thankfully the school provided fluoride for our teeth, and you could always visit the school nurse and take a rest on the cot in her office until you felt better, or your parent came to get you . . .
http://www.stfm.org/fmhub/fm2012/March/Debra209.pdf
Agriwellness:
“Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an emergency department nurse crouched by [the patient’s] bedside,
gripping his hand. Immediately impressed by her bedside manner, I paused with my paperwork to watch her.
Moments later, a tear trailed from her lower lash to her trembling lip. My thoughts were interrupted by
another staff person bellowing for morphine. The nurse mumbled something in response. When
nobody reacted, she repeated more clearly, ‘He’s allergic to morphine.’ Surprised, everyone turned to her. ‘I know,’
she sighed, “because he’s my grandfather.’”
These sentences by Megan Wills Kullnat were among the first that I read in a new book called The Country
Doctor Revisited. This book contains a collection of essays, short stories and poems written by care providers
who have chosen to live and practice in the rural areas of this country. AgriWellness received copies of the book because our executive director, Mike Rosmann, has a short story included in the collection.
I was immediately drawn into this book. ....
For full review: AgriWellness Partners - September 2010 (PDF, 112KB)
Michael Perry:
When Therese Zink was teaching in the Rural Physician Assistant Program at the University of Minnesota, she became interested in the stories of small town medicine. Now she has compiled an anthology published as part of the Literature and Medicine by Kent State University Press filled with essays exploring this concept. The book is called The Country Doctor Revisited, and I’m honored to say it includes an essay drawn from Population 485. ....
For full review: Mike Perry in Sneezing Cow: "New Literature and Medicine Anthology" - October 4, 2010
Minnesota Medicine:
Book Review
Rural Medicine Revisited
A collection of essays takes us into the lives of small-town physicians.
Review by Charles R. Meyer, M.D.
His tanned, cracked hands shook slightly as he held the emesis basin, vomiting bright red blood almost continuously. Stoically, he swallowed the large-bore oral gastric tube we used in those days to lavage the stomach with iced saline in patients with a GI bleed. Stoic was the cardinal word for this Iowa farmer who, for the past several weeks, would pause briefly while driving his tractor, vomit blood, and then continue his plowing. Only when he was too weak to walk did he come to the Mayo Clinic, where I was the admitting resident.
My Iowa farmer patient from long ago surfaced in my memory when I read about Elwin, a farmer described in Donald Kollisch’s story “Good Will,” one of the essays and poems about the practice of rural medicine contained in Therese Zink’s collection The Country Doctor Revisited. A victim of valvular disease and congestive heart failure, Elwin insisted on baling hay, more than once triggering a bout of pulmonary edema. Reluctantly, he came to the hospital, telling the ER staff through his gasps that his stay would be short and that he would return to his John Deere. Patients from the farm seem to be made of different cloth. And, as all the pieces in this multi-authored collection show, medicine in the crooks and crevices of the U.S. countryside has a different weave than that of urban or suburban practice. ...
For full review: Charles R. Meyer, M.D. at Minnesota Medicine: "Rural Medicine Revisited" - January 2011
Rochester MN Post Bulletin:
Dr. Therese Zink of Zumbrota wants to update obsolete perceptions of rural medicine.
Zink is the editor and a contributing author to a new collection of essays, short stories and poems by rural healthcare providers. The book, "The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader," gathers the thoughts and reflections of people who practice modern, small-town medicine.
The collection is filled with compelling snapshots of the joys and challenges of current rural healthcare, ranging from humorous to heart-wrenching.
Mike Augustin at The Post Bulletin Lifestyles - January 19, 2011
Articles
University of Minnesota Alumni Association - Spring 2012
The Country Doctor:
University of Minnesota physician and professor Therese Zink uses writing and storytelling to engage medical students in rural family medicine.
By J. Trout Lowen, Photographs by Sara Rubinstein ...
Link to article
Minneapolis, MN - June 30, 2011 - StarTribune - (Photo: Kyndell Harkness)
When Dr. Therese Zink started collecting real-life stories for a book about country
doctors, she had one rule: No Norman Rockwell-like tales from a bygone era...
Link: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/wellness/124723993.html
University of Minnesota Web page - August, 2011
http://www1.umn.edu/news/features/2011/UR_CONTENT_351315.html
Duluth, Minnesota - June 28, 2011:
Minnesota Rural Health Conference
Therese Zink, M.D., of Zumbrota, and Right Side Up in Otter Tail County were recognized June 28th at the Minnesota Rural Health Conference in Duluth for their outstanding contributions to rural health care. Dr. Zink received the Minnesota Rural Health Hero award for promoting rural health in Minnesota and across the county. Dr. Zink is a member of the University of Minnesota faculty, a published author, and a family physician in Zumbrota.
Link: http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/orhpc/conf/prevawards.html
Rural Roads - Spring 2011:
National Rural Health Association member Therese Zink, MD, recently edited “The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-first Century Reader”, a collection of stories, poems and essays by rural health professionals across the country.
Zink and more than 30 others contributed to the 191-page anthology, published last year by Kent State University Press.
Here is the link:
http://ruralroadsonline.com/Members on the move-Zink
Xenia, Ohio - Greene County Dailies, 2/15/2011:
Read about the world of healthcare practitioners
PAUL COLLINS,
Staff Writer
XENIA — Bookworms and readers visiting Blue Jacket Books on Thursday, Feb. 10, got to explore the world of rural healthcare providers when Dr. Therese Zink delivered a presentation and conducted a book signing.
Zink is the editor of The Country Doctor Revisited, a highly praised anthology that examines the experiences of doctors and nurses practicing medicine in areas far away from city lights and urban settings. It is a topic that is familiar to Zink; the physician received her first taste of rural life at the tender age of 10.
“I grew up on a farm in Greene County,” said Zink. “I was born in Dayton and my father had a dentist office there. When I got older, he moved the family to a Beavercreek farm area.”
... More
Duluth, Minnesota - Duluth News Tribune, 02/13/2011:
Doctors read stories from book about rural health care
Several people braved below-zero temperatures Jan. 21 to get to the University of Minnesota Duluth to listen to four of the authors of “The Country Doctor Revisited” read their work in the book at the University of Minnesota Medical School at UMD. ... Article PDF
Wilmington, Ohio - News Journal, 2/5/2011:
Country Doctor Revisited
Rural health care has changed over the decades. Doctors don't make house call anymore, or do they? ... Article PDF
From Dayton, Ohio:
Country doctors have unique stories to tell. Dr. Therese Zink, a country doctor herself, has edited the stories in a book titled, “The Country Doctor Revisited — A Twenty-First Century Reader.” As a young woman on a farm on Swigert Road in Kettering, in the same house where her mother grew up, Zink collected eggs, delivered lambs and sold cider at a roadside stand. “These were fitting experiences in my quest to becoming a doctor,” remembers Zink, who majored in English at Marquette University, completed pre-med studies at Wright State University and graduated from the medical school at Ohio State University in 1985.
...
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From Red Wing, Minnesota:
Not your grandmother's country doctor: Book aims to update image of rural health care
It's an image straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: the white-haired country doctor, black bag in hand, making house calls at farmhouses. "With a new millenium bringing everything from enclaves of Indian doctors in Appalachia to telemedicine in isolated South Dakota farmhouses, modern rural health care is a far cry from that of yesteryear," says Dr. Therese Zink. The Zumbrota physician and writer hopes to shatter the myth of the country doctor with her new book of essays, "The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader."
... More
From Belfast Maine:
Midcoast physician Dr. David Loxterkamp has contributed a selection to the new anthology "The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader." Loxterkamp is a family physician who has practiced in Belfast for 24 years. ... More
News from Indian Country:
Dr. Arne Vainio contributes selection to new anthology. ...
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From Granite Falls, Minnesota:
Within the new book, “The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader,” an essay by Granite Falls Associated Community Medical Care (ACMC) doctor Darrell Carter gives readers insight into a hypothetical evening-in-the-life of a rural hospital that has adopted the Comprehensive Advanced Life Support (CALS) Program.
Dr. Carter has served as a family physician in Granite Falls since 1972 and is the co-founder and Program Director of the CALS Program. In early 2009 the Granite Falls Municipal Hospital and Manor became only the second hospital in the state to be awarded a CALS hospital certification and it requires no great leap in logic to imagine that the experiences Carter has had while practicing at the local hospital heavily influenced his essay. ...
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Interviews
Minnesota Broadcaster's Association
http://www.accessminnesotaonline.com/2012/02/22/the-country-doctor-revisited/
KSEN Shelby, Montana
http://ksenam.com/is-there-a-doctor-in-the-house/
KAXE Grand Rapids, MN
http://www.kaxe.org/Audiobox/RealGoodWords/RGW2011_0907_ThereseZink.mp3
Sound Medicine Indiana Public Radio
http://soundmedicine.iu.edu/segment/2774/Book--The-Country-Doctor-Revisited
University of Minnesota Bookstore Reading
http://www.bookstores.umn.edu/genref/podcast.html