I would like to comment about Dr. LaCombe's story, "Caring for Strangers" [1]. As a female physician who has practiced medicine for many years and has been a full-time medical school faculty member for the past 26 years, I was offended by the description of the life and medical education of the young woman in this story. The reference to "quick sex for its own sake" was particularly offensive, as was the description of the young woman sleeping with her resident "as though it were part of the rotation, and while he worried about keeping it from his wife, she worried about The Match."

Perhaps the most offensive comment was "Now one of the boys, she began to be treated like the men, except on that occasion when allowing herself to be treated like a woman might further her own career." I hope that this story does not fall into the hands of young women who are considering careers in medicine. There are so many positive aspects of learning to become a physician and so much satisfaction to be found in one's life as a physician that I would hate for young women to read this and believe that it is necessarily true. For me, the worst was the sentence that described the night our "heroine" was called to the emergency department to see a patient who "stared at her even as she felt his stare and loathed and avoided it." This is not a description of medicine as the caring profession I have known.