NYU Med Students To Be Featured In Book About Coronavirus Crisis

NEW YORK, NY — New York University students who took the plunge into hospitals ravaged by the coronavirus will soon be the subject of a new book following the journeys of medical students who graduated early to fight the pandemic.

The book — written by Emma Goldberg, a researcher and writer at The New York Times — will explore the uniquely difficult experience of students from four New York universities who were asked to start their career three months early in the middle of a pandemic.

"What does it mean to be stepping into the field at the time of greatest need and possibly greatest risk?" said Goldberg, who first started following students pursuing medicine for a New York Times project last fall.

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The yet-unnamed book, published by HarperCollins, is slated to debut in early 2021, Goldberg said.

It will focus primarily on five or so students, though Goldberg said she is speaking almost daily with a larger number of new doctors from New York University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and CUNY and SUNY medical schools. Four of the students she's speaking with now are from NYU.

Like many New York schools, New York University decided in late March to let its medical school students begin working in April instead of their normal July 1 start-date, answering the call from Gov. Andrew Cuomo for more physicians in overwhelmed New York hospitals.

More than NYU Grossman School of Medicine's 122 fourth-year students took the offer.

Golberg said the decision for all medical students she's talking to who made that call did so with the "astounding" risks of joining the frontlines in mind.

"They had to weigh risks to their own safety...separating from family members who are at risk, risk to their partners or roommates — all of them had to run through that calculus," she said.

And though the specifics of their journeys will have to wait for the finished book, Goldberg said, she shared that ultimately it was the students' commitment to helping others that led them to take the plunge.

Becoming a doctor meant answering the call when the need was there, she said.

"A lot of them felt they had entered the field for this exact reason," Goldberg said. "...That was worth it for them."

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