{"id":1285,"name":"Alexandra Godfrey, BSc PT, MS PA-C","url":"","description":"I grew up in a small mining town in Northern England where I was known as the \u201cdoctor\u2019s daughter.\u201d I lived up to my moniker by giving my sisters\u2019 dolls measles and operating on their teddy bears. After my mother hid the markers, I turned my attention to books \u2014 not only my dad\u2019s medical tomes, but also a great number of English literature books. Tucked away in the British literature, I found a quintessentially American writer, Mark Twain, who taught me that if you must eat a frog, you should eat it early. That is, get undesirable tasks done first. \r\n These important life lessons (and literary ways) carried over into my medical education; first as a physical therapist in the British National Health Service, where we encouraged ailing patients to be <i>fighters<\/i>, and later in Detroit, where my physician assistant training was likened to <i>drinking from<\/i> a <i>fire hydrant <\/i>and cancer was <i>a battle<\/i> (to be fought and won). I learned that the words we use to describe our lives, education, and work matter. Really matter. Thus, I have been writing for most of my 20 years in medicine, and have done so in all forms (author, editor, speaker, professor, poet) and published in all manner of journals (<i>Pulse, The Clinical Advisor, Confluence, The Yale Journal, Cell2Soul)<\/i>. I volunteered for the last 6 years on the editorial board of the <i>Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants<\/i>, editing everything and anything along with writing for the \u201cArt of Medicine\u201d, \u201cEmergency Medicine Notes\u201d, and the \u201cMusings\u201d blog.\r\n After completing an emergency medicine fellowship in Michigan, I moved to western North Carolina where I continue to practice emergency medicine and also find space to write.","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/frontlines-clinical-medicine\/author\/agodfrey\/","slug":"agodfrey","avatar_urls":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ed846a75db21a13bac6f0ced0ccf1bec614bb49ebac840d9d93811f323dc9ff9?s=24&d=mm&r=g","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ed846a75db21a13bac6f0ced0ccf1bec614bb49ebac840d9d93811f323dc9ff9?s=48&d=mm&r=g","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/ed846a75db21a13bac6f0ced0ccf1bec614bb49ebac840d9d93811f323dc9ff9?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/frontlines-clinical-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/frontlines-clinical-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users"}]}}