Summer Reading List (I'm NOT talking about Harrison's or Robbins')

[NotAClue]

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Some books I've really enjoyed:

Atul Gawande's "Better": check out his website: http://www.gawande.com
He recently received the MacArthur "genius" grant for his work on reducing medical errors. Many of the vignettes in the book can be found on his website (as they are simply his writings for the Times and other publications)

Groopman's "How Doctor's Think" So far pretty good. Talks about biases and mistakes in thinking that cause errors to happen, as well as strategies for stopping those errors.

Sandeep Jauhar's "Intern: A Doctor's Initiation" A pretty good book about a medicine resident's first year plus some of the bildungsroman type struggles he faced growing up. For what it's worth I'm also Indoamerican so this book probably resonates with me a little more than it would for a reader who doesn't come from the same culture. Regardless I found it better written and easier to read than "House of God," which, personally, I think is pure dreck.


Any other suggestions? In particular I'm interested in the lives/discoveries of the great doctors in the early 20th century and how they went about making their diagnoses.

 

[DarthNeurology]

Some books I've really enjoyed:

Atul Gawande's "Better": check out his website: http://www.gawande.com
He recently received the MacArthur "genius" grant for his work on reducing medical errors. Many of the vignettes in the book can be found on his website (as they are simply his writings for the Times and other publications)

Groopman's "How Doctor's Think" So far pretty good. Talks about biases and mistakes in thinking that cause errors to happen, as well as strategies for stopping those errors.

I really liked Atul Gawande's "Complications" as well as anything written by Dr. Oliver Sacks, http://www.oliversacks.com , features a lot about neurologists and discoveries/interesting cases of the 20th Century

 

[NotAClue]

Darth,

If you like Sacks' works, you should check out Phantoms in the Brain by V S Ramachandran.

 

[Pir8DeacDoc]

I've read a lot of the books by Dr Sherwin Nuland and they were all good as I recall.

 

[Top Gun]

Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Michael Collins, MD is a good book. Its about the orthopedic residency he did at the Mayo Clinic, and gives a good discussion about patients he saw, the long hours he worked, surgeries he scrubbed in on, his family life during residency, and also his various attendings who mentored him.

M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker is another good book. Although its fiction, its partially based on the author's experiences as a surgeon during the Korean War. And it is full of black comedy, so if you're into that sort of thing, you will get a good laugh out of it.

 

[drfunktacular]

In particular I'm interested in the lives/discoveries of the great doctors in the early 20th century and how they went about making their diagnoses.

I would say you really need to read Michael Bliss' biographies of William Osler (link) and Harvey Cushing (link), both of whom were great doctors of the early 20th century. If you're especially dedicated, you could always read Cushing's two-volume biography of Osler, for which I believe he won the Pulitzer.

Also, The Knife Man (link), a biography of John Hunter, 18th c. Scottish surgeon, was entertaining from front to back.

 

[NotAClue]

DrFunk,

Thanks for the suggestions. For others that might be interested, Google's book collection will allow you to preview a little of the biographies that Funk was talking about. In addition Google Books will allow you to view in its entirety Osler's "The Principles and Practices of Medicine" as well as some other essays (all for free).

Go to http://books.google.com and search for "William Osler"

 

[buckley]

In a different book, I read that Harvey Cushing proceeded to do an operation immediately after being informed that his son died in an accident, and that on Harvey Cushing's autopsy, he was found to have a brain tumor. Quite interesting indeed!

Another biography worth looking over, especially by medical students is Sir James Paget. He had great speeches as well.

 

[Top Gun]

Here's another one

The Year of the Intern by Robin Cook

The book itself is fiction, but it gives a good discussion of what it was like to be an intern in the 70's.