Triple threat

Cardiology fellow Shirlene Obuobi, MD’18, wrote her first novel, On Rotation, during her internal medicine residency. A second novel will be published in 2024.

The whirlwind year of Dr. Obuobi, Shirlene and ShirlyWhirl

BY JAMIE BARTOSCH

Shirlene Obuobi, MD’18, slips on her freshly ironed University of Chicago Medicine white coat and gently pushes her long braids behind her shoulder.

She’s posing for a magazine photo, to appear with the latest in a series of media interviews she’s done since her debut novel, On Rotation, received critical acclaim and interest from Hollywood movie producers.

Obuobi wrote parts of the novel on her phone during her internal medicine residency at UChicago Medicine, often typing a few sentences into a Google Doc as she walked down the hospital halls or during lulls on nights. Writing helped her escape the stress of work and COVID-19.

As the photographer starts snapping pictures, Obuobi tries, unsuccessfully, to stifle a big yawn.

“Sorry,” she says, laughing and quickly resuming her pose. “I’m fine. I’m good.”

She is good. Really good. And justifiably tired. Even for someone as chronically busy as Obuobi, this year has been a rocket ship ride.

Now in the second year of her cardiology fellowship at UChicago Medicine, Obuobi finds herself in the strange predicament of having two burgeoning careers at age 29: medicine and writing. She has already sold the international rights to On Rotation. Avon/Harper Collins is set to publish her second novel, Exposure, about a doctor’s struggles with life and love, in the summer of 2024.

A third career also looms: art. Obuobi is a prolific and popular graphic medicine artist who’s amassed more than 35,000 Instagram followers with her comics on @shirlywhirlmd. She’s popular on

#MedTwitter and other related hashtags, making her a “medfluencer” (a social media influencer in the medical field). It’s led to partnerships with groups like the American Lung Association and GoodRx.

“Medicine informs my art. The two feed off each other,” she said. “I don’t want to quit medicine. I tell people, ‘I don’t have to be in fellowship. I could have finished my residency and gotten a job!’ I truly love clinical medicine. I love cardiology. I love physiology and I love the potential for impact. I think I have talents that can lend themselves to this field, but I really don’t know what the future’s going to look like for me.”

As if all this wasn’t enough, she got married in two different wedding ceremonies this summer (one traditional Ghanaian, one traditional American) and gave the keynote speech at the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society induction ceremony at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.

“I am squeezing every inch out of my hours now,” she said. “I’m a very good multi-tasker, but even for me, this is a tight juggle. I sacrifice myself. I don’t get much in the way of rest or respite. But it’s been incredible. It’s been surreal.”

Somehow, she seems to be mastering it all. And she’s enjoying the ride as her national profile rises at a sharp ascent.

“A star is born,” tweeted one of her friends, after seeing Obuobi’s appearance on “Good Morning America” on July 5.

Telling her own story

Born in Ghana, Obuobi came to the United States at age 6. She lived in Chicago, Arkansas and Texas before enrolling at Washington University in St. Louis and then at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine.

For her 10th birthday gift, she asked her mother to make bound copies of a novel she wrote. Her birthday party doubled as a book launch, and she gave each guest an autographed copy.

“The title of the book was Tears of Happiness, Tears of Grief, Both I Can Not Handle,” she said, laughing. “I think that tells you what kind of a 10-year-old I was.”

Obuobi stopped writing soon after that, as teachers warned that writing about the Ghanaian-American experience was very niche and not relatable to a wider audience. Discouraged, she spent the next decade focused on other passions: school, science, medicine and drawing.

During her first year at Pritzker, Obuobi attended a talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American author Junot Díaz. He spoke about being a writer of color, encouraging the audience to push against naysayers and tell their stories. His words had a profound impact on her.

“I went home and wrote the first chapter of On Rotation that night. It was like this award-winning author was giving me permission to write again,” said Obuobi, who years later would finish her coming-of-age story about a Ghanaian-American medical school student who is figuring out her career and relationships.

During that time, she kept the book a secret from her friends and co-workers. Even her then-fiancé didn’t know until last year, when she told him she’d landed a literary agent.

“I didn’t want to give people the opportunity to tell me ‘no,’” she said.

Her Pritzker mentors

Pritzker and UChicago Medicine have played instrumental roles in Obuobi reaching this point in her dual careers. It was at Pritzker where Obuobi met the woman she calls her “first true champion” and “medicine mom,” Monica Vela, MD’93.

Vela, a Latina doctor who, at the time, was the school’s Dean for Multicultural Affairs, became Obuobi’s mentor and instilled enough confidence in her that she launched shirlywhirlmd on Instagram during her third year of medical school.

Most shirlywhirlmd comics are funny, giving a glimpse into life as a sleep-deprived medical school student, resident and fellow. Others cast a critical eye on the healthcare industry or touch on issues that

Obuobi is a graphic medicine artist whose comics tackle issues from the challenges facing medical trainees to healthcare disparities and racism.

are important to Obuobi, such as healthcare inequity, racism and abortion access. Because Obuobi is the first Black female cardiology fellow at UChicago Medicine in 13 years, she offers a unique perspective on working in the predominantly white, male cardiology field. Less than 2 percent of cardiology fellowship program applicants are Black women, said R. Parker Ward, MD, Director of UChicago Medicine’s Cardiovascular Fellowship Program.

“Sometimes the things I say are going to make people uncomfortable. But it’s still my voice and it’s my platform, so I can’t always adjust for that discomfort,” Obuobi said. “In medicine, there’s pressure to be a chameleon so you can adapt to people’s different expectations of you. I pushed against that.”

Doctors are heavily critiqued and often isolated if they speak up about their social justice viewpoints, so what Obuobi is doing is not easy, Vela said. And yet, she does it in a way that’s unapologetically authentic.

While in medical school, Obuobi invited ethnically diverse groups of Pritzker students to her home, without faculty present, to discuss social justice issues, allowing them to ask difficult questions that they might be too scared to ask in the classroom.

Obuobi also taught graphic medicine to first-year medical students, both as a form of education and advocacy, in Pritzker’s Health Equity, Advocacy and Anti-Racism course. The M1 students absolutely loved it, said Vela, course director for 15 years.

“She steps out in a very big way. It’s not that she’s fearless, but she has great courage,” said Vela, now Professor of Medicine and Director of the Hispanic Center of Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago, as well as Associate Editor of JAMA Network Open. “To have someone in medicine who’s able to integrate graphic medicine and storytelling as a social mission is incredible. She’s really launched this field in ways that others have not.”

Another of Obuobi’s mentors, Bryan Smith, MD’10, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, was the first Black cardiologist she’d ever known. When she was a medical student and he was a cardiology attending, she watched in admiration as he provided outstanding care to his patients and also prioritized outreach events to help people in the South Side community.

Smith and Obuobi ended up working together on a few programs that mentor students from underrepresented minority backgrounds who are interested in medical careers. They both believe that having more Black doctors is good for everyone, especially Black patients, and it can improve racial biases.

“These things are so important, but they are not necessarily the things that academic medicine rewards you for,” Obuobi said. “I mean, why does no one who looks like me go into academic medicine? We have to figure out why that is. We have to make it hospitable. Because right now, it’s not.”

Smith invited the Black Pritzker students to his house for dinner recently and asked Obuobi to join them. As a Black, female cardiology fellow with a second career in a creative field, she’s something of a unicorn, he said. Her lively, funny and warm personality charmed everyone at the party.

“When she walked in the door, the students were so excited to meet her. She’s like a rock star to them,” Smith said. “Just by being who she is, she’s paving a path for future Black trainees in cardiology.”

Vela credits Obuobi with helping foster a new way for people in academic medicine to communicate with each other about difficult issues.

“She’s created a legacy at Pritzker,” Vela said.

@shirlywhirlmd has more than 35,000 Instagram followers.

Follow her on Instagram:

@shirlywhirlmd

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