Seven Books Every Aspiring Physician Should Read
Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science
By Atul Gawande
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Each book written by Atul Gawande focuses on a different aspect of medicine. This book was written in 2002, during Gawande’s General Surgery residency program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass. In this book, Gawande communicates the most raw, complex and chaotic moments in medicine in such a manner that it gives the reader a front-row seat experience. Real stories (with relevant names anonymized, of course) of his most unique experiences in medicine make this book a fascinating read all while providing an incredible insight into life in medicine.
Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance
By Atul Gawande
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In “Better,” Atul Gawande explores more aspects of medicine. This book is divided into three sections: Diligence, Doing Right and Ingenuity. Like all of Gawande’s books, this one provides more insight into the healthcare field through the insightful lens of a surgeon. In the first part of the book, he takes something as simple and uncomplicated as hand washing and inserts it into situations that make up the most complex areas of medicine. The second part discusses a study and research done about rural health care in India. This book dives deep into these aspects of medicine and shows them through a lens that hasn’t been seen before.
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
By Atul Gawande
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This book discusses exactly what is in the title: checklists. In this journey of The Checklist Manifesto, Gawande looks at something as simple as a checklist, something that is used at all levels of someone’s career (from a student level all the way to experienced professional), and applies it to the perspective of steps to perform life-saving surgeries. He has conversations with various professionals, including those involved with construction. The progress of the book builds up the importance of using checklists as he goes from explaining how they are already used to how they can be incorporated into the setting of an operating room. Just as insightful and captivating as his other texts, this read focuses on one seemingly minor aspect of learning, the checklist, and turns it into something that can help save lives.
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
By Atul Gawande
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This book is a heavy read. The title reveals that this book will discuss the mortality aspect of medicine. Like all of Gawande’s books, this one also contains real patient stories, but these are much heavier and slightly darker than the ones in his other three books as they deal with the moments toward the end of the patients’ lives. Gawande discusses what really matters in life, and shows that rather than attempting to cure life, we must focus on the moments that make life meaningful. He even weaves his father’s case into the set of patient stories and discusses those moments through the lens of a physician, and most importantly, through the lens of a son. This is a book that gives a completely new perspective on the concept of life and death, and is an incredible read.
When Breath Becomes Air
By Paul Kalanithi
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Those who love reading books written by Atul Gawande must give this one a read, as this one is close to Gawande’s Being Mortal. Dr. Paul Kalanithi was 36 when he received a cancer diagnosis. He had never smoked in his life, and yet was diagnosed with IV non-small-cell EGFR-positive lung cancer (the EGFR stands for epidermal growth factor receptor, which is something that helps cells grow and divide). A mutation in this gene can cause the EGFR to remain in the “on” position and leads to abnormal growth, which could lead to cancer. Kalanithi was in his last year of neurosurgical residency training, and this book’s manuscript had to be completed after his death. This book follows Kalanithi as a medical student, neurosurgical resident, a patient with terminal lung cancer and a new father and how he lives the 22 months left to him after his diagnosis.
When the Air Hits Your Brain
By Frank Vertosick Jr., MD
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It all started when Frank Vertosick was in his third year of medical school. At that time, Vertosick was interested in cardiac surgery, but could not choose that as his rotation due to a prerequisite general surgery rotation he had not been through. So he decided to choose neurosurgery, which was a “scheduling glitch” as he describes in the second chapter of his book. After that, the patients he encountered throughout his training, the ones who taught him important life lessons outside of the medical and procedural aspect of practicing medicine are the ones who make up this book. This book is a memoir of Dr. Frank Vertosick’s experiences and his journey through medical school and the seven-year neurosurgery residency all the way to a world-class neurosurgeon.
Stiff
By Mary Roach
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The concept of cadavers may seem morbid at first, but this book portrays cadavers through a different perspective. This perspective of seeing cadavers as serving as part of the training process that physicians-in-training go through is not unknown, but most of the time, people are unable to go beyond the “dead person” layer of the lives of cadavers. Cadavers are one of the most important elements of medical training. Medical students start their first year in anatomy lab, and later they learn how to perform procedures on them before performing them on live people. There are more gruesome situations described in this book in an insightful yet comedic manner.