waterstone
Member
Has anyone read any inspiring/motivational books written by physicians or by surgeons ? I read How to do a liver transplant by Kelee Slater.
Nice one, I must say.
Nice one, I must say.
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Medicine Related Books and Novels
- Thread starter waterstone
- Start date
johnmethew
Lurker
its very hard to find books which are completely read by the reader and who tell the name of either physicians or surgeon.But hope few will be joined this topic and try to help out you.
Oxycodone
Surgical registrar
This past summer I read "do no harm" by English Neurosurgeon Henry marsh I'd highly recommend it, it gave great insight into what an actual neurosurgeons life is like. I also read "when the air hits your brain" by American Neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick, it honestly was AMAZING i loved every bit of it. He goes into the struggles one must live with being a neurosurgeon, and all the patients which emotionally impacted him most. Again, highly recommended.
Kasia Smith
kasiunut
Novels:
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
This sprawling, 50-year epic begins with a touch of alchemy: the birth of conjoined twins to an Indian nun in an Ethiopian hospital in 1954. The likely father, a British surgeon, flees upon the mother’s death, and the (now separated) baby boys are adopted by a loving Indian couple who run the hospital. Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters–and opening a fascinating window onto the Third World–Cutting for Stone is an underdog and a winner. Shades of Slumdog Millionaire.”
The House of God by Samuel Shem
Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings.
A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
Winner of the 2006 Giller Prize, Lam has assembled a collection of short stories that follows four characters from their student days, through medical school and into their careers as doctors.
Non-fiction:
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease
The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the E.R by Brian Goldman
In The Night Shift, Dr. Brian Goldman shares his experiences in the witching hours at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto. We meet the kinds of patients who walk into an E.R. after midnight: late-night revellers injured on their way home after last call, teens assaulted in the streets by other teens and a woman who punches another woman out of jealousy over a man. But Goldman also reveals the emotional, heartbreaking side of everyday E.R. visits: adult children forced to make life and death decisions about critically ill parents, victims of sexual assault, and mentally ill and homeless patients looking for understanding and a quick fix in the twenty-four-hour waiting room. Written with Goldman’s trademark honesty and with surprising humour, The Night Shift is also a frank look at many issues facing the medical profession today, and it offers a highly compelling inside view into an often shrouded world.
The Secret Language of Doctors by Brian Goldman
In The Secret Language of Doctors, Dr. Brian Goldman pulls back the curtain to reveal some of medicine's darkest modern secrets, decoding the colourful and clandestine expressions doctors employ to describe difficult patients, situations and medical conditions—and sometimes even other colleagues. You'll discover what it means to exhibit the symptoms of "incarceritis," what "blocking" and "turfing" are, and why you never want to be diagnosed with a "horrendoma." In the process, you'll gain profound insight into what doctors really think about their patients' personalities and even their chances of making it out of the hospital alive.
Highly accessible, biting, funny and entertaining, The Secret Language of Doctors reveals modern medical culture at its best and all too often at its worst.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
This sprawling, 50-year epic begins with a touch of alchemy: the birth of conjoined twins to an Indian nun in an Ethiopian hospital in 1954. The likely father, a British surgeon, flees upon the mother’s death, and the (now separated) baby boys are adopted by a loving Indian couple who run the hospital. Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters–and opening a fascinating window onto the Third World–Cutting for Stone is an underdog and a winner. Shades of Slumdog Millionaire.”
The House of God by Samuel Shem
Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings.
A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
Winner of the 2006 Giller Prize, Lam has assembled a collection of short stories that follows four characters from their student days, through medical school and into their careers as doctors.
Non-fiction:
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients. Mukherjee's profound compassion--for cancer patients, their families, as well as the oncologists who, all too often, can offer little hope--makes this book a very human history of an elusive and complicated disease
The Night Shift: Real Life in the Heart of the E.R by Brian Goldman
In The Night Shift, Dr. Brian Goldman shares his experiences in the witching hours at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto. We meet the kinds of patients who walk into an E.R. after midnight: late-night revellers injured on their way home after last call, teens assaulted in the streets by other teens and a woman who punches another woman out of jealousy over a man. But Goldman also reveals the emotional, heartbreaking side of everyday E.R. visits: adult children forced to make life and death decisions about critically ill parents, victims of sexual assault, and mentally ill and homeless patients looking for understanding and a quick fix in the twenty-four-hour waiting room. Written with Goldman’s trademark honesty and with surprising humour, The Night Shift is also a frank look at many issues facing the medical profession today, and it offers a highly compelling inside view into an often shrouded world.
The Secret Language of Doctors by Brian Goldman
In The Secret Language of Doctors, Dr. Brian Goldman pulls back the curtain to reveal some of medicine's darkest modern secrets, decoding the colourful and clandestine expressions doctors employ to describe difficult patients, situations and medical conditions—and sometimes even other colleagues. You'll discover what it means to exhibit the symptoms of "incarceritis," what "blocking" and "turfing" are, and why you never want to be diagnosed with a "horrendoma." In the process, you'll gain profound insight into what doctors really think about their patients' personalities and even their chances of making it out of the hospital alive.
Highly accessible, biting, funny and entertaining, The Secret Language of Doctors reveals modern medical culture at its best and all too often at its worst.
1. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales, by Oliver Sacks, is excellent.
2. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink. Jaw-dropping in parts, for the shocking nature of what went on after Hurricane Katrina.
3. Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories, by Terrence Holt. A collection of short, true stories.
2. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm Ravaged Hospital, by Sheri Fink. Jaw-dropping in parts, for the shocking nature of what went on after Hurricane Katrina.
3. Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories, by Terrence Holt. A collection of short, true stories.
LBoG
BMedSci/MD-JMP II UoN
I'll wholeheartedly second this recommendation and add that The Laws of Medicine by the same author is a VERY good read.
Also Bleed by Bill Williams, which is a book written by an Australian doctor about the true story of when his wife had a bleed in her brain in the outback. Amazing book.
Also Band-Aid for a Broken Leg by Damien Brown is another non-fiction book about the authors experiences with MSF (Doctors Without Borders). Very, very good!
The Hospital by the River by Dr Catherine Hamlin is another non-fiction book about the authors life as an Australian gynaecologist who moved with her husband to work in a hospital in Ethiopia (still living and working there fifty years later).
There are many more but these came to mind first.
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A few recommendations in these posts.
ETA: I’ve read a few others since my previous post:
When Breath Becomes Air
House of God
(I don’t really recommend either, tbh)
and
Healing Children (a Paediatric surgeon’s autobiography). I do recommend this one, especially if you’re interested in paeds.
ETA2: I also recently read The Bone Garden, which is a novel, but it looks at the practice of grave robbing bodies to be used as cadavers in medical schools as well as post-partem fever in women who’d just given birth and where doctors were the unknowing vector in spreading infection. It was interesting because we’d just discussed that topic in a lecture.
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Not an Otago student (was very very close to becoming one), but my favourite med related author has to be Adam Kay. "This is Going To Hurt" was hilarious, and I recently bought his Christmas themed book, "The Nightshift Before Christmas" for a friend.
I read a few medicine-related books this year so thought I’d do a quick update:
️️️ Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death, and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon’s First Years: Michael Collins
Great insight into the exhausting, bewildering, and exhilarating early years as a surgeon, and also the casual misogyny that continues to rumble along (it is woven into this memoir almost completely unconsciously by the author, imo. It’s definitely not a deliberate exploration, it’s just very blatantly clear, particularly in some sections where he’s talking about his wife).
️️️ Oxygen: Carol Cassella
A novel, but written by an anaesthetist. A medicolegal whodunnit type story that means I get my own indemnity insurance every year even though the hospital I work at also covers me! If push comes to shove, the hospital lawyers will protect the hospital first... quite a sobering (but obvious in hindsight!) realisation!
️️️️️ Breaking and Mending: A Doctor’s Story of Burnout and Discovery: Joanna Cannon
A memoir of her time as a (mature-aged) medical student and junior doctor, and her eventual settling into psychiatry. To say I over-identified is probably an understatement so maybe my review is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I thought this was excellent. Poignant, heart-breaking, eye-opening, and with comments on compassion and kindness and how sometimes they’re the only things you have to offer as a medical student/junior doctor, but also how they are not always the right things, that I literally wrote down for future reference.
️️️ Left Neglected: Lisa Genova
An autobiography of a woman in the middle of a high-flying career who has a stroke and must deal with the resultant left neglect she experiences. A really good patient insight into a complex presentation.
️️️️ Into the Abyss: A Neuropsychiatrist’s Notes on Troubled Minds: Anthony David
A series of vignettes about patients and experiences.
️️️ Going Under: Sonia Henry
A novel but written by a doctor about being a doctor. Pretty generic fiction, imo. Easy reading, but not much else.
️️️ Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression: Johann Hari
I read this immediately after finishing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which probably made it more poignant than it would otherwise have been. It was recommended to me by a GP. Not a bad read at all, and some interesting points made about humanity, human connectedness, isolation, and depression.
️️️ Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death, and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon’s First Years: Michael CollinsGreat insight into the exhausting, bewildering, and exhilarating early years as a surgeon, and also the casual misogyny that continues to rumble along (it is woven into this memoir almost completely unconsciously by the author, imo. It’s definitely not a deliberate exploration, it’s just very blatantly clear, particularly in some sections where he’s talking about his wife).
️️️ Oxygen: Carol CassellaA novel, but written by an anaesthetist. A medicolegal whodunnit type story that means I get my own indemnity insurance every year even though the hospital I work at also covers me! If push comes to shove, the hospital lawyers will protect the hospital first... quite a sobering (but obvious in hindsight!) realisation!
️️️️️ Breaking and Mending: A Doctor’s Story of Burnout and Discovery: Joanna CannonA memoir of her time as a (mature-aged) medical student and junior doctor, and her eventual settling into psychiatry. To say I over-identified is probably an understatement so maybe my review is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I thought this was excellent. Poignant, heart-breaking, eye-opening, and with comments on compassion and kindness and how sometimes they’re the only things you have to offer as a medical student/junior doctor, but also how they are not always the right things, that I literally wrote down for future reference.
️️️ Left Neglected: Lisa GenovaAn autobiography of a woman in the middle of a high-flying career who has a stroke and must deal with the resultant left neglect she experiences. A really good patient insight into a complex presentation.
️️️️ Into the Abyss: A Neuropsychiatrist’s Notes on Troubled Minds: Anthony DavidA series of vignettes about patients and experiences.
️️️ Going Under: Sonia HenryA novel but written by a doctor about being a doctor. Pretty generic fiction, imo. Easy reading, but not much else.
️️️ Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression: Johann HariI read this immediately after finishing Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which probably made it more poignant than it would otherwise have been. It was recommended to me by a GP. Not a bad read at all, and some interesting points made about humanity, human connectedness, isolation, and depression.
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Another one I just finished (also, I’ve added a ️ rating and will edit my above post):
️️️️ The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness: Susannah Cahalan
Investigative journalism style expose on Rosenhan’s (in)famous ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ that was published in Science in the early 70s, and the flow-on effect this (likely fabricated) data had on mental health care and the development of the DSM-III. Written by the same journalist who wrote Brain on Fire about her own experience of autoimmune encephalitis and her initial misdiagnosis of schizophrenia.
️ rating and will edit my above post):️️️️ The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness: Susannah CahalanInvestigative journalism style expose on Rosenhan’s (in)famous ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’ that was published in Science in the early 70s, and the flow-on effect this (likely fabricated) data had on mental health care and the development of the DSM-III. Written by the same journalist who wrote Brain on Fire about her own experience of autoimmune encephalitis and her initial misdiagnosis of schizophrenia.
Penny Lane
Member
I really enjoyed:
- When breath becomes air - Paul Kalanithi
- Life in his hands - Susan Wyndham
- This is going to hurt - Adam Kay
and currently reading The Barefoot Surgeon! I really wanted to like “Can you die of a broken heart?” which is by Australian Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon Nikki Stamp but I couldn’t get into it
- When breath becomes air - Paul Kalanithi
- Life in his hands - Susan Wyndham
- This is going to hurt - Adam Kay
and currently reading The Barefoot Surgeon! I really wanted to like “Can you die of a broken heart?” which is by Australian Cardio-Thoracic Surgeon Nikki Stamp but I couldn’t get into it
️️️️ Patient or Pretender: Inside the Strange World of Factitious Disorders: Charles Ford, Marc Feldman, and Toni ReinholdA compilation of case studies and discussion regarding the motivations and behaviours of patients presenting with factitious disorders or Munchausen syndrome. I've often lumped the two together (and this seems common), but they separate out the two entities based on motivation (factitious disorders deliberately faked for monetary or other gain compared to Munchausen syndrome where patients induce symptoms (in themselves or others - by proxy) due to emotional/psychological/personality driven factors).
️️️️ The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right: Atul GawandeAn interesting result of Gawande's role in developing the WHO's Surgical Safety Checklist. He looks at the place of checklists in aviation, the construction industry, and finance, and the processes he and his colleagues at the WHO went through in order to adapt and apply similar measures to surgery.
ETA: I am still very much struggling to make it through Yumiko Kadota's Emotional Female. It's really not my cup of tea (writing-wise), despite me knowing the content will be interesting (and no doubt horrifying). If anyone has finished this and wants to share their thoughts, please do!
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William@1989
Lurker
Seven books to read if you’re a medicine student
Discover seven books every medical student should read that show you the good, the bad and the ugly written by the people who know.
greenleaf657
Lurker
My hyperfixation book genre here’s a few I didn’t see mentioned
The 3 Cynric Temple-Camp books, a NZ pathologist with really interesting stories
A Dim Prognosis -Popovich speaks to the current state of NZ healthcare from a reg POV
Vital signs - Lomax-Sawyers - another junior doctor collection of stories
The 3 Cynric Temple-Camp books, a NZ pathologist with really interesting stories
A Dim Prognosis -Popovich speaks to the current state of NZ healthcare from a reg POV
Vital signs - Lomax-Sawyers - another junior doctor collection of stories
