house of god
13 Aug 2012 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayoraaseiHaving been told it is THE required reading for anyone starting medical internship, your go-to guide for everything horrible about the job, I got around to finally reading it on my way to DC.
It's been about three weeks since I came back and I must confess, I've forgotten most of it already, which probably indicates its merits as a book.
Of course, my perception of it would be coloured by my experience of being in the industry, and would most likely be very different to that of an outsider's.
If anything, I wonder if people remember it for how cynical it paints the medical profession, as a system that turns sympathetic young physicians into dehumanised machines.
I remember not liking it much as a book. The protagonist was difficult to like, and I couldn't remember much of his personality - but that was probably the point. The narrative was on occasions circumferential and at other times overly theatrical, and perhaps that too was also the point. And there was an air of painful predictability about it, the climb and the fall, and then the inevitable redemption.
But perhaps there was also an element of fear, reading it, that one day we would all turn into them. Jaded, disillusioned, embittered, careless and cold. We all know that feeling when we get called to see a 96-year-old sprightly but delirious old lady barking at the bed rails on the last hour of a 15-hour shift. We all get that feeling when we've led a demented 82-year-old back from the precarious brink of death and successfully negotiated the complex politics of respite only to be faced with a displeased family member who is aghast we didn't have a masseur on call to relieve their father's chronic shoulder stiffness.
I feel I can recognise the tropes, but at the same time I feel there's a disconnect in the world portrayed in the book to the world I know. I think every medical student knows a type A personality freak like Jo, but (perhaps not having yet done surgery) I don't think I've come across many doctors who are still, today, willing to go beyond what is necessary to treat what cannot be cured.
But perhaps, in a way, the book helped push the motion towards safer rostering, because I sure as hell don't want anyone to make any medical (or surgical) decisions about my health or commence any procedure on me on their 23rd consecutive hour at work. Unfortunately in many hospitals across the world, including developed nations, it is an ongoing issue.
One last thing, I'm not at all sure about the relevance of sex to the other events in the book. There is probably some Freudian or Jungian connections but I find it annoying and detracting more than anything else.
It's been about three weeks since I came back and I must confess, I've forgotten most of it already, which probably indicates its merits as a book.
Of course, my perception of it would be coloured by my experience of being in the industry, and would most likely be very different to that of an outsider's.
If anything, I wonder if people remember it for how cynical it paints the medical profession, as a system that turns sympathetic young physicians into dehumanised machines.
I remember not liking it much as a book. The protagonist was difficult to like, and I couldn't remember much of his personality - but that was probably the point. The narrative was on occasions circumferential and at other times overly theatrical, and perhaps that too was also the point. And there was an air of painful predictability about it, the climb and the fall, and then the inevitable redemption.
But perhaps there was also an element of fear, reading it, that one day we would all turn into them. Jaded, disillusioned, embittered, careless and cold. We all know that feeling when we get called to see a 96-year-old sprightly but delirious old lady barking at the bed rails on the last hour of a 15-hour shift. We all get that feeling when we've led a demented 82-year-old back from the precarious brink of death and successfully negotiated the complex politics of respite only to be faced with a displeased family member who is aghast we didn't have a masseur on call to relieve their father's chronic shoulder stiffness.
I feel I can recognise the tropes, but at the same time I feel there's a disconnect in the world portrayed in the book to the world I know. I think every medical student knows a type A personality freak like Jo, but (perhaps not having yet done surgery) I don't think I've come across many doctors who are still, today, willing to go beyond what is necessary to treat what cannot be cured.
But perhaps, in a way, the book helped push the motion towards safer rostering, because I sure as hell don't want anyone to make any medical (or surgical) decisions about my health or commence any procedure on me on their 23rd consecutive hour at work. Unfortunately in many hospitals across the world, including developed nations, it is an ongoing issue.
One last thing, I'm not at all sure about the relevance of sex to the other events in the book. There is probably some Freudian or Jungian connections but I find it annoying and detracting more than anything else.
