At age 33, Melvin Konner entered medical school. This is an account of his third year when students first apply the results of their endless book-learning and test-taking.

This insightful and candid guide unveils the truth about medical school, residency, and the fascinating realities that await aspiring physicians beyond the classroom. On Becoming a Doctor provides an essential roadmap for your medical odyssey including: Comprehensive Guidance: Delve into the intricacies of medical school life and residency, as well as the challenges and rewards of being a doctor. Gain invaluable insights into the various medical specialties, allowing you to make informed decisions about your future career path. First-Hand Accounts: Written by seasoned medical professionals, this book provides authentic first-hand accounts of the rigors and triumphs experienced throughout medical training. Learn from their experiences and use their wisdom to navigate your own journey with confidence. Balancing Life and Work: Discover the secrets to maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the demanding world of medicine. On Becoming a Doctor offers practical tips on managing stress, fostering personal well-being, and nurturing a fulfilling personal life alongside a thriving medical career. Residency Success Strategies: Unravel the complexities of the residency application process and equip yourself with indispensable strategies to stand out in this highly competitive arena. Our expert advice will empower you to excel during your residency and launch a successful medical career. Patient Stories: Be inspired by heartwarming and insightful patient stories that illustrate the transformative power of compassionate healthcare. Learn how to provide exceptional patient care and forge meaningful connections with those you serve. Navigating Medical Challenges: From medical ethics dilemmas to emotional resilience, On Becoming a Doctor addresses the diverse challenges doctors encounter. Equip yourself with the tools to overcome obstacles and make a lasting impact on the lives of your patients. Thriving Beyond Residency: Beyond residency lies a vast landscape of opportunities. Learn about alternative career paths, research opportunities, and potential for leadership roles within the medical community. Unlock your potential and discover what lies ahead in your fulfilling medical journey. Empower yourself with knowledge, empathy, and resilience as you embrace the transformative journey of becoming a doctor. A perfect graduation gift for any aspiring medical professional!

&Lsquo;I Was An Intern A Decade Ago Now, But I Still Remember It The Way Soldiers Remember War.&Rsquo; Intern Is Sandeep Jauhar&Rsquo;S Story Of His Days And Nights In Residency At A Busy Hospital In New York City, A Trial That Led Him To Question Every Assumption About Medical Care Today. Residency&Mdash;And Especially The First Year, Called Internship&Mdash;Is Legendary For Its Brutality. Working Eighty Hours Or More Per Week, Most New Doctors Spend Their First Year Asking Themselves Why They Wanted To Be Doctors In The First Place. &Nbsp; Jauhar&Rsquo;S Internship Was Even More Harrowing Than Most: He Switched From Physics To Medicine In Order To Follow A More Humane Calling&Mdash;Only To Find That Medicine Put Patients&Rsquo; Concerns Last. He Struggled To Find A Place Among Squadrons Of Cocky Residents And Doctors. He Challenged The Practices Of The Internship In The New York Times, Attracting The Suspicions Of The Medical Bureaucracy. Then, Suddenly Stricken, He Became A Patient Himself&Mdash;And Came To See That Today&Rsquo;S High-Tech, High-Pressure Medicine Can Be A Humane Science After All. Now A Thriving Cardiologist, Jauhar Has All The Qualities You&Rsquo;D Want In Your Own Doctor: Expertise, Insight, A Feel For The Human Factor, A Sense Of Humor, And A Keen Awareness Of The Worries That We All Have In Common. His Beautifully Written Memoir Explains The Inner Workings Of Modern Medicine With Rare Candor And Insight. Reviews &Lsquo;A Sensitive, Thoughtful Observer And An Experienced, Gifted Writer . . . It Will Be The Standard By Which Future Such Memoirs Will Be Judged&Rsquo; &Mdash;Abraham Verghese, Author Of My Own Country &Lsquo;In A Voice Of Profound Honesty And Intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar Gives Us An Insider&Rsquo;S Look At The Medical Profession, And Also A Dramatic Account Of The Psychological Challenges Of Early Adulthood&Rsquo; &Mdash;Akhil Sharma, Author Of An Obedient Father

A look at the emotional side of medicine—the shame, fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, and even love that affect patient care Physicians are assumed to be objective, rational beings, easily able to detach as they guide patients and families through some of life’s most challenging moments. But doctors’ emotional responses to the life-and-death dramas of everyday practice have a profound impact on medical care. And while much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. In What Doctors Feel, Dr. Danielle Ofri has taken on the task of dissecting the hidden emotional responses of doctors, and how these directly influence patients. How do the stresses of medical life—from paperwork to grueling hours to lawsuits to facing death—affect the medical care that doctors can offer their patients? Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Danielle Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care. With her renowned eye for dramatic detail, Dr. Ofri takes us into the swirling heart of patient care, telling stories of caregivers caught up and occasionally torn down by the whirlwind life of doctoring. She admits to the humiliation of an error that nearly killed one of her patients and her forever fear of making another. She mourns when a beloved patient is denied a heart transplant. She tells the riveting stories of an intern traumatized when she is forced to let a newborn die in her arms, and of a doctor whose daily glass of wine to handle the frustrations of the ER escalates into a destructive addiction. But doctors don’t only feel fear, grief, and frustration. Ofri also reveals that doctors tell bad jokes about “toxic sock syndrome,” cope through gallows humor, find hope in impossible situations, and surrender to ecstatic happiness when they triumph over illness. The stories here reveal the undeniable truth that emotions have a distinct effect on how doctors care for their patients. For both clinicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

This book is written entirely by young doctors and medical residents in a language readers not fully familiar with the field can still understand and enjoy. So You Wanna Be A Doctor is a must read for anyone pursuing a career in the health professions! Don't waste years and money getting lost in a sea of questions and misinformation! The authors responsible for compiling this book tell you about their personal journey and the tools you will also need for success. Each chapter of the book highlights a different medical specialty or rotation and helps you avoid some of the most common mistakes newcomers and even veterans make. You will find valuable time-lines, additional resources, key insider information, advice, and moving testimonials, from the doctors who live it everyday!

If Atul Gawande were funny--or Jerome Groopman were a working mother--they might sound something like Michelle Au, M.D., author of this hilarious and poignant memoir of a medical residency. Michelle Au started medical school armed only with a surfeit of idealism, a handful of old ER episodes for reference, and some vague notion about "helping people." This Won't Hurt a Bit is the story of how she grew up and became a real doctor. It's a no-holds-barred account of what a modern medical education feels like, from the grim to the ridiculous, from the heartwarming to the obscene. Unlike most medical memoirs, however, this one details the author's struggles to maintain a life outside of the hospital, in the small amount of free time she had to live it. And, after she and her husband have a baby early in both their medical residencies, Au explores the demands of being a parent with those of a physician, two all-consuming jobs in which the lives of others are very literally in her hands. Au's stories range from hilarious to heartbreaking and hit every note in between, proving more than anything that the creation of a new doctor (and a new parent) is far messier, far more uncertain, and far more gratifying than one could ever expect.

Stories from the ER: a doctor shows how empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care. To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor’s most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won’t work if doctors get the story wrong. Empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care. In Tornado of Life, ER physician Jay Baruch offers a series of short, powerful, and affecting essays that capture the stories of ER patients in all their complexity and messiness. Patients come to the ER with lives troubled by scales of misfortune that have little to do with disease or injury. ER doctors must be problem-finders before they are problem-solvers. Cheryl, for example, whose story is a chaos narrative of “and this happened, and then that happened, and then, and then and then and then,” tells Baruch she is "stuck in a tornado of life.” What will help her, and what will help Mr. K., who seems like a textbook case of post-combat PTSD but turns out not to be? Baruch describes, among other things, the emergency of loneliness (invoking Chekhov, another doctor-writer); his own (frightening) experience as a patient; the patient who demanded a hug; and emergency medicine during COVID-19. These stories often end without closure or solutions. The patients are discharged into the world. But if they’re lucky, the doctor has listened to their stories as well as treated them.