Rating: 
Summary: A different view at each stage of your career
Review: An excellant book that should be required reading for medical students, residents and attendings. The cynicism differs depending on your stage of training and career. Read it more than once, each time it will have a different meaning
Rating:
Summary: Must read for any medical student! True and funny!
Review: If you have anything to do with medicine - except from being a patient - read this! Amazingly funny in the beginning it turns to become more and more cynic. Includes the 10 rules of the House of god! If you don't have this book - get it now
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anybody who wants to become a physician.
Review: This is a book which reveals the true trials and tribulations
of becoming a physician. While the author certainly takes
some poetic licensousness (no mistake), most of the book is
relevent and disturbingly true. Don't read it until you
have completed your internship!
Rating: 
Summary: That's the Way It Was
Review: I read this book when I was a medical resident at a Southern BMS (Best Medical School), and I was convinced that the author ("Dr. X" at the time) was a colleague! His language, descriptions of patients, anecdotes, and staff portrayals were too similar not to have come directly from the wards and clinics where I worked. And, I was horrified to see, from another vantage point, what I and my fellow residents were becoming. When I re-read the book decades later, I was grateful that a great many things have changed in our approaches to training new physicians.
There are two primary aspects of interest in this book: first, it is an uproariously funny book to anyone who trained in an urban medical center in the 1960-1970 era (others will miss 90% of the "in-group" humor), and, second, it is a devastating indictment of the way that physicians were trained at medical centers in the middle of the 20th century.
It is a good read, but now of most interest to 50+ year-old physicians and nurses.
Rating:
Summary: I wanted to give it 6 stars!
Review: This book knocked my socks off! I loved it as a 4th year med student and I love it more as an intern! Humor like this is a way to survive life in the hospital and we read it as part of our intern book club! A must read!
Rating:
Summary: IX THE ONLY GOOD ADMISSION IS A DEAD ADMISSION
Review: The House of God does a good job of highlighting the issues of iatrogenic morbidity and mortality in a fictional setting.
I thought this was a great read and was anxious to talk about it with colleagues. However, it seems many people, especially within the medical community, do not like to discuss the fact that medicine can and does harm people. Discussing this novel with a classmate in a joking manner even got me sent to Dean's office during medical school. In spite of all that, I will continue to recommend this novel to anyone interested in pursuing medicine as a career.
Dr. Bergman has created a classic book of satire that makes the point that although medical education is getting better, patient care is getting worse. I look forward to reading Mount Misery, which I understand is losely based on his training at McLean Hospital.
Jason Begalke
Rating: 
Summary: Keep Your Day Job
Review: I love reading and there have only been three novels in my life which I forced myself to read (the first was part of a book club so I had to read the book in its entirety to discuss with the group, the second one was loaned by a good friend who loved it so I gave it the benefit of the doubt but I did not complete it, and this one).
There seems to be a consensus in the book reviews for this book that if you're a resident and read this book, it is a sarcastic but realistic portrayal of life as an intern and if you're an outsider, it's disturbing. I am an outsider and yes I did find it disturbing. I don't doubt that it might reflect reality. But the writing is poor, the character development non-existent and the plot nowhere to be seen. In one book review, it stated the characters are great and really portray hospital life accurately. In my opinion, this could not be further from the truth. I kept waiting for the protagonist to share some of his inner thoughts - or just thoughts period, with the reader. One sentence here and one there alluding that he may want to kill himself just doesn't cut it (no pun intended). I patiently (again, no pun intended) but persistently plodded through the book waiting, expecting... giving it the benefit of the doubt, since the book was hailed as a classic and because I am interested (as much as an outsider can be) in the field of medicine/health. But character development never came. And this applies to all the characters. Sure, it was interesting to learn about the BUFF and TURF and Gomers Don't Die which we read about in the beginning of the book, but to still talk about it one-third through the book, and then half way through the book, and then two-thirds through the book... Just the same thing over and over again. BUFF and TURF, BUFF and TURF, BUFF and TURF. On and on and on... You call that insight! Enough already! I suggest the author keep his day job (MD).
Rating:
Summary: Loved it the Second Time Around
Review: Being a med student and working to "save" lives in the hospital for the last two years, I can totally relate myself to the main character of The House of God. Even if it was written in the 70s, it still applies in 2004. Reading this novel was almost like reading my two years rotating in the hospital. I should have read this book before my rotations started two years ago to know all the Laws of the House of God! I realise that I do hate gomers too! It is a great novel and all med students should read it before heading to start their rotations in the hospitals. Like Roy, I am heading to psych.
Rating:
Summary: Enormously Funny!
Review: Samuel Shem (Stephen Bergman, M.D.) has written an amazingly funny story containing more medical truth than many realize. Follow Roy Basch and five other interns through clinic rotations from their unique vantage point at the bottom of the medical staff at the BMS (Best Medical School). Watch as the "Fat Man" (the omnipotent resident) teaches them the medical secret of doing nothing, discreetly works to maintain their sanity and hopefully makes doctors out of them. Witness an expertly executed "buff and turf" and learn why "gomers don't die," but they do "go to ground." A must read for any medical student and for anyone who has ever wanted an inside look at medicine.
Rating:
Summary: A+++ Awesome Catch 22 Internship
Review: A wonderful wildly provocative heartbreaking book. I enjoy the journey of Roy Basch and his fellow interns dissecting the real world in the most famous teaching hospital. This book reflects -- how alarming & realistic medicine can be, albeit the irony in medicine inevitably exist in one way or the other. My first idiom I learned "Knock My Socks Off" which I perfectly describe in this book. Awesome, Provocative, Brilliant with Wild Sense of Humor!!!=).
|
