Medical School Memoirs?

[CJRonR]

I’ve read Scott Turow’s “One L” a memoir about his first year at law school. It provided a good idea of what law school would really be like. Are there any books similar to this concerning Med School?

[hubbellsdad]

When I was in medical school (mid 1970s), I found the “House of God” by Samuel Shem(a pseudonym for a real physician) quite entertaining. It is a bit cynical for today, perhaps, but in my years since, I found it quite prophetic.

[N_s_Mom]

House of God was a classic in its time - but its pretty dated, including some stereotypes that deserve to die. it looks like there’s an opportunity for an updated ‘House of God’ - some med student with free time on their hand (hah!) should take this on.

Here’s a list of books that might make interesting reading - although most are about practicing medicine rather than the medical school process itself.

http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/22589.Best_Books_for_Medical_Students

[VSGPeanut101]

At one point in my life I read all of these that I could find
The list by @N’s Mom is a great resource.
Here are my thoughts specifically about memoirs (and some novels) that focus on the journey of early medical trainees.

I find The House of God as relevant today as ever. Sure, there is a lot that’s dated, but the underlying story - the journey of the bright young newbie intern to the jaded resident, any many of the caricatures of different attendings ring very true to experiences today.

The Intern Blues is also about residency, but also pretty good.

Specifically focusing on the preclinical and clinical years of medical school…

Perri Klass’ Not an Entirely Benign Procedure is a great memoir, by a physician who went on to become a rather prolific writer.

Becoming a Doctor is a story of a man who returned to medical school a little later, so its a bit more critical about the process, but also has more insight than the eager young things who charge right from undergrad.

Eric Segal (who wrote Love Story) wrote a novel called Doctors about a class of Harvard Med School and follows into their later careers.

[WayOutWestMom]

Here’s a couple more–

Tengo Sed by James Fleming.

The Trauma ICU of a Level 1 trauma center is the setting for this thought-provoking novel, which reveals the ruthlessness of medical education and practice. James Fleming recounts a day in the life of a resident in emergency medicine at an urban teaching hospital. The novel’s title, which translates loosely as “I thirst,” echoes the Christ of St. John. Tengo Sed’s protagonist, however, known only as Hovercraft because he is “always around, always feeling on edge,” is not a savior but a hapless resident with a tendency toward mysticism. Through Hovercraft’s sleep-deprived eyes we see patients and their families, doctors, and nurses, and we share Hovercraft’s increasingly nightmarish perceptions of a world in which things are not going right.

The Blood of Strangers by Frank Huyler

This haunting, exquisitely observed collection of medical vignettes is much more than a compilation of odd cases from the emergency room. Huyler probes beneath the surface to reveal the marrow of his encounters with patients, such as when, after making a swift diagnosis and saving a life, he later looks in on the patient and pauses to sit “in the dark for a while, watching the red and blue lights of the monitor, savoring him, taking something for myself.” Inviting the reader behind the drape, he recounts his personal journey from his first days as a medical student in gross anatomy lab through the harder, lonelier days of his internship and residency before he finally stepped into the coveted role of attending physician, vested with full authority. With a poet’s economy, Huyler dismantles the myth of the privileged doctor’s life, revealing the long hours and loneliness that are too often requisites for the job. His character studies of the often quirky, sometimes tragic colleagues and patients who pass through the ward are quite poignantAfrom the murderer whose beating heart Huyler holds in his hands during a life-saving surgical procedure to the head of the trauma service who “looked remarkably like Lee Harvey Oswald” and seduced scads of nurses until one very efficiently took her revenge.