Prospective medical students must read
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A sadistic yet hilarious take on life as a doctor. it made me want to study medicine even more!!!
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please please please buy!
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A fantastic read for any doctors out there who remember what it was like being a house officer/intern. Surprisingly close to real life in the UK too!! For those who don't work in the medical sphere - still a great read and almost certainly a bit of an eye opener.
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An Account of Discovering The Meaning of Doctorhood
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Samuel Shem's take on the first year of being a Doctor, the internship, is an excellent account of the destruction of the ideology of Medicine and the gradual erosion of innocence within this context.
Basch, Shem's protagonist is introduced to the daily practicalities of being an Intern, by The Fat Man who kicks Basch's lofty ideals out from under him, giving him the cynical know-how to survive the ordeal. Basch turns from being shocked at such disrespect, to eventualy embracing it and losing his own humanity.
Shem chronicles Basch's use of sex, humour, cynicism and finally denial as tools to survive the onslaught from the patients and the Institution's inane ethos of treating their patients to death. What struck resonance with myself was not only the connection with medicine (having been the equivalent of an intern myself) but the analogy (intended or not) with growing up and the loss of childhood belief and innocence. This belief is something that society maintains when it comes to medicine, a belief that everyone (or at least many) can be cured, and that Doctors can do it.
Basch's journey is that of discovering the true meaning of being a Doctor and rather than becoming permanently jaded and disillusioned, he finds the balance between reality and holding on to the origin of why he chose medicine as a career. This is an excellent read, evoking thought and reflection, truly a memorable book that I took something away from. I look forward to Shem's book on his experience within psychiatry.
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Insightful but self-absorbed
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Maybe it's that it's an intern in the US in 1975 rather than a PRHO in the UK in 2000, but a lot of this book didn't click with me or my experiences. In this interesting semi-biographical account of his experiences, Bergman says he didn't cure anyone the whole year. I couldn't have gone a whole week without curing someone.
The year he writes about is hellish and chaotic, and he's a good writer, but the smell of wilful exaggeration is never very far away. Did he really know someone who punctured the heart while trying to put in a chest drain? Did he really despairingly sleep with several sexy nurses? Did he really have a profound emotional epiphany while watching a mime performance? Dear me.
In short, I didn't enjoy it much but he's got a fine ear for anecdote and writing in general. Just don't take it too seriously.
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excellently dark but american
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this is the original and much imitated "oh no i'm losing the plot and i'm a junior doctor" book. he gets a bit emotional and cheesy sometimes, but its a great collection of the best mess gags. theres another excellent english junior doctor book by michael foxton called 'bedside stories' which is the angry NHS junior doctor column guy who wrote for the guardian, and thats hilarious and horrible.
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