Boys in White

The transition from young layman aspiring to be a physician to the young physician skilled in technique and confident in his dealings with patients is slow and halting. To study medicine is generally rated one of the major educational ordeals of American youth. The difficulty of this process and how medical students feel about their training, their doctor-teachers, and the profession they are entering is the target of this study. Now regarded as a classic, Boys in White is of vital interest to medical educators and sociologists.

By daily interviews and observations in classes, wards, laboratories, and operating theaters, the team of sociologists who carried out this firsthand research have not only captured the worries, cynicism, and basic idealism of medical students—they have also documented many other realities of medical education in relation to society. With some sixty tables and illustrations, the book is a major experiment in analyzing and presenting qualitative data.

Howard S. Becker was professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara and before that at Northwestern University in Illinois. Some of the topics he has written on are sociology of art, qualitative methods, and visual sociology. He is the author of numerous books, including Tricks of the Trade, Outsiders, and Art Worlds. Blanche Geer was professor of sociology at Northeastern University and Brandeis University. She served as associate editor of Social Problems and The Sociology of Education. Everett C. Hughes was professor of sociology at Boston College and The University of Chicago. He is the author of French Canada in Transition, Men and Their Work, and Where Peoples Meet. Anselm L. Strauss (1916-1996) was professor of sociology and chair of the department of social and behavioral sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. He is internationally recognized for his efforts in the fields of medical sociology and the developer, with Barney Glaser, of grounded theory.