A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student

Healing Hearts: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon

Kathy Magliato · 261 pages

An inspiring, surprising, and deeply informative memoir of the high-stakes life of a female heart surgeon.

Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon

Nick Trout · 287 pages

It's 2:47 a.m. when Dr. Nick Trout takes the phone call that starts another hectic day at the Angell Animal Medical Center. Sage, a ten-year old German shepherd, will die without emergency surgery for a serious stomach condition. Over the next twenty-four hours Dr. Trout fights for Sage's life, battles disease in the operating room, unravels tricky diagnoses, reassures frantic pet parents, and ref

Something for the Pain: Compassion and Burnout in the ER

Paul Austin · 304 pages

In this riveting memoir, an ER doctor reveals how his high-stress career of helping others led to a struggle to save himself.

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · 256 pages

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve me

Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death from the ER

Pamela Grim · 320 pages

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor

Adam Kay · 278 pages

As soon as Adam Kay set foot on a hospital ward for the first time, he realized there's quite a lot they don't teach you at medical school ... His diaries from the NHS front line - scribbled in secret after long nights, endless days and missed weekends - are hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns. This Is Going to Hurt is everything you wanted to know about being a junior doctor, and mor

Sick Notes: A Doctor's Tale From The Front Lines Of Medicine

Tony Copperfield · 263 pages

Falling into the Fire

Christine Montross

Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat

David Dosa · 256 pages

When Oscar arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island, he was a cute little cat with attitude. He loved to stretch out in a puddle of sunlight and chase his tail until he was dizzy. Occasionally he consented to a scratch behind the ears, but only when it suited him. In other words, he was a typical cat. Or so it seemed. It wasn't long before Oscar had created som

One Doctor: Close Calls, Cold Cases and the Mystery of Medicine

Brendan Reilly · 448 pages

"A first-person narrative that takes readers inside the medical profession as one doctor solves real-life medical mysteries"--Provided by publisher.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

Anne Fadiman · 341 pages

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. Parents and doctors both wanted the best for Lia, but their

In Stitches

Nick Edwards · 272 pages

'Despite the headlines, actually the NHS has just had its best year ever.' Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of Sate for Health, eulogising to the BBC, 22nd April 2006'Despite what the politicians say, things seem to have gone a bit tits-up recently.' Dr. Nick Edwards, A&E doctor, ranting to his mates down the pub, 22nd April 2006Dr Nick Edwards is an Accident and Emergency (A&E) doctor working in the UK

Band-Aid for a Broken Leg

Damien Brown · 345 pages

Damien Brown is a twenty-nine-year-old Australian doctor, inexperienced but motivated by a strong desire to help, when he arrives in Angola - an impoverished, war-torn country in south west Africa - for a six-month posting with Medecins Sans Frontieres. It's his first stint with the organisation, and he thinks he is ready.

Intern: A Doctor's Initiation

Sandeep Jauhar · 320 pages

Intern is Dr. Sandeep Jauhar's story of his days and nights in residency at a busy hospital in New York City, a trial that led him to question his every assumption about medical care today. Residency―and especially its first year, the internship―is legendary for its brutality, and Jauhar's experience was even more harrowing than most. He switched from physics to medicine in order to follow a mo

Sometimes Amazing Things Happen: Heartbreak and Hope on the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward

Elizabeth Ford · 272 pages

Welcome to the Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Prison Ward, a maximum-security hospital and inpatient psychiatric unit for the inmates of the New York City jail system, with its hub on Rikers Island. It is a world of heartbreak, violence, and pain, where severely ill men are often lost in a tangle of courts, jails, and bureaucracy. It is also a place of challenges, redemption, and surprising joy, wh

Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases

Cory Franklin

The Tennis Partner

Abraham Verghese · 345 pages

Verghese's marriage is unraveling. He relocates to El Paso, Texas, hoping to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. He meets David, a medical student and former tennis pro, and their matches reawaken Verghese's passion for the game. As David's life takes some disturbing turns, Verghese finds himself forced to choose between his role as friend and that of authority figure.

Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue

Danielle Ofri · 251 pages

Singular Intimacies is the story of becoming a doctor by immersion at New York's Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the country-and perhaps the most legendary. It is both the classic inner-city hospital and a unique amalgam of history, insanity, beauty, and intellect. When Danielle Ofri enters the doors of this 250-year-old institution as a tentative medical student, she is immediate

In the Midst of Life

Jennifer Worth · 427 pages

Just as Jennifer was present at the beginning of life in her midwife books, here she documents her experiences as a nurse and ward sister treating patients who were nearing the end of their lives. Interpersed with these stories from Jennifer's post-midwife career are the histories of her patients, discussions on the circumstances in which we die, and a stripping-back of the myths and taboos surrou

On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency

Emily R. Transue · 249 pages

The story of a medical resident's initiation into her first three years as a doctor follows her internship in a Seattle hospital, where she experiences first-hand the triumphs and challenges of rescuing and losing patients.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages

Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

Eben Alexander · 196 pages

"A SCIENTIST'S CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are controversial. Thousands of people have had them, but many in the scientific community have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those people. A highly trained neurosurgeon who had operated on thousands of brains in the course of his career, Alexander knew that what people of faith call the "soul"

A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic’s Wild Ride to the Edge and Back

Kevin Hazzard · 261 pages

"A former paramedic's visceral, poignant, and mordantly funny account of a decade spent on Atlanta's mean streets saving lives and connecting with the drama and occasional beauty that lies inside catastrophe. In the aftermath of 9/11 Kevin Hazzard felt that something was missing from his life--his days were too safe, too routine. A failed salesman turned local reporter, he wanted to test himself,

Civil War Hospital Sketches

Louisa May Alcott · 80 pages