House Of God (Black Swan)

As an ex Army Medic and an ex Registered Nurse... I found this book entertaining, confronting, stimulating, exciting and more....It is a book I can read and reread many times (I HAVE) and talk about among friends and family....You will know any good nurse, doctor or paramedical professional immediately when you say such words as "GOMER" (and they KNOW you are not referring to an old US TV comedy show about the USMC) or BUFF, TURF...etc...A combination of M*A*S*H, Catch 22, House and more... An all time CLASSIC book HIGHLY RECOMMENDED...

Bought for my daughter to read before entering college as she wanted to be a nurse. Was originally given to me by an MD friend when I was considering med school 25 years ago.

Classic but brutal accounting of what it is really like to be in the healthcare field.

Awesome read!

As a physician, this book touched my heart and soul. This is the second time I read it, the first being as a med student many years ago. It was beautifully written by a physician, for physicians, to help us appreciate the issues we face as we acquire the skills to be good doctors. The relationship between providers and our patients is complex, to say the least. The book explore it in ways that only someone who has walked in our shoes can do. It won't be understood by the lay public who will likely see it as a treatise on how abusive and unfeeling physicians must become to survive the rigors of internship. However, it does shed light on how difficult it is to learn to deal with life vs. death and how we struggle to develop a sense of balance for our patients and in our own lives.

Insight to New interns in a large hospital and how some patients are GOMERS and definately not welcome. Mainly old patients are not tolerated well. Gomer stand for GET OUT OF MY E.R.. Like any other business there are those who want to do their job as best as possible and others with less care. Interesting but a little too much time spent on the sexual lifes of these young doctors.

Great classic book
I'm an orthopedic surgeon and reading it as a Med student , resident and now as a practicing physician with 20'years experience , it is poignant and timeless in recognizing the struggle to maintain ones humanity in an inhuman medical juggernaut . It's even tougher now with more obstacles and hoops to jump through erected by the greedy health insurers and mindless bureaucratic red tape strung by the so called "quality improvement " regulators and certifiers who manufacture problems to fix that never needed fixing in order to justify the need for their continuing employment .

Most famous nowadays perhaps for its influence on "Scrubs," "The House of God" is both more vicious and obscene and less absurdist. The denouement is perhaps too trite and runs on for a bit long, but overall this is an incisive and funny account of modern medicine, with many of the same moral paradoxes presented as in the tv series that drew inspiration from it. Set against the backdrop of Watergate, the book is somewhat a product of its time, with some broad but nonetheless penetrating ethnic caricaturing.

Comparisons with "Catch 22," which I've seen in several reviews, are, I feel, unwarranted. "Catch 22" was, for me, at least, extraordinarily difficult to read (although I did slog through it to the end); this, on the other hand, is eminently readable. (I couldn't put it down, and read it through completely in a matter of days, laughing the entire time.)

I liked this novel. The characters, although somewhat unbelievable, kept the story going.(especially the fat man, loved him). I certainly felt there was a very pro-psychiatry message to this book and the bottom line was how great psychiatry is compared to other medical specialties. Working in the medical field I can tell you this is far from the truth. And "being there" or "listening" as the book puts it is far from what you see the drug peddling psychopharmacists actually doing in practice. Overall this was an entertaining read.

Like some other reviewers, I read this book when it first came out. I was an intern at the time, we had one copy to share among the entire intern group (we were poor obviously), and we passed it around until it literally fell apart. Many of the "Fat Man's Laws" became bywords in rounds and signouts, "gomers go to ground" and all the rest, as they encapsulated so neatly what we were all feeling and experiencing on a daily basis. At the time, the book resonated deeply with me, it seemed to me dead on target and extremely funny. It certainly helped all of us deal with the stress and depersonalization of internship in showing us we were not alone and that, in truth, things could be worse if we had been lucky/unlucky enough to match at a major academic center like MGH or JHU. Reading the book again, 38 years later, I'm surprised at how well it has stood the test of time. It's still quite funny, but I now have the perspective to understand how deeply tragic. And I'm sad to say that the fundamentally brutalizing and desocializing process of internship and residency has hardly changed at all, especially in the surgical specialties and in "Meccas" like the Mighty Johns or Mass General.

Everyone in medicine should read this. So should their spouses. Everyone who is considering applying to Med school should read this and evaluate if you are ready for the emotionally tumultuous journey ahead.

Very interesting read for those working in health care. Bit over the top at some parts but certainly shows us into the life of what it's like to go thru such a strenuous education. Work as a PA myself, but many of the struggles of their internship are still relatable to clinical rotations.

Absolutely mind-blowing account of the life and lives of interns at an East Coast hospital.....possibly Mass General in the 70's. Some of the hours of duty have been changed (as have the techniques) in recent years, but becoming an MD is quite different from the fairytale that a layperson often imagines.. Fortunately, I know an integrity-driven and incredibly honest physician who encouraged me to read the book. I'm intensely grateful to her; and from now on, I intend to stay well.

Great book, highly recommend it. Funny, and strangely insightful to medicine in a delightfully inappropriate way. Working in medicine myself, I could relate to many of the situations of the interns. Was recommended to me by a fabulous ER physician while on rotation for PA school.

I graduated from medical school in 1987 and finished residency in 1990. I had heard about The House of God for years and I am glad I finally read it. I found it provoking, entertaining, and easy to read. It certainly brings back some all too familiar memories -- though many of the issues remain relevent and contemporary!

As someone currently try going through the same life situation as the narrator this book had special interest to me. The book itself is very entertaining if you are a physician or becoming a physician. I think it might be rather hard to comprehend parts of the book without a background in medicine.

The scenarios in the book are extremely outdated as far as protocol, techniques, technologies and ethics are concerned. The story shows the timeless aspects of medical training. Being at odds with your superiors and often times even the patients. It is a good reminder for every doctor to read so he doesn't fall into the same traps a lot of characters in the book do. While the story is extremely exaggerated, a great deal of it shines a light to the brutality and callousness of medical training.

i enjoyed reading this novel. in it, the author follows the main character through the trials and tribulations of internship. this book goes a long way to portray physicians as human beings instead of a god-like figure. this book will make you laugh, it will make you sad and it will make you think.

My how things have changed. I did my internship in 2011 and did not encounter half of the things documented in this satire. True, there is a system of 'slurpers' who are moving their way up the hospital chain. There are self righteous residents who care more about being right than helping the patient. But there are no midnight trysts with nurses or blatant euthanasia. Thankfully I don't know of any suicides except for a terrible experience with a classmate in medical school. Supervision has much improved and supervising physicians are available at every turn.

However, the one thing that rings true is that compassion for the patient reigns supreme. If that is the one lesson learned from this book by young doctors-to-be, I pray that is it.

The afterword is preachy and self indulgent. The author is unintentionally hilarious by advocating for a system that is devoid of the evil money making schemes of hospitals and insurance companies. He envisions a system of limited bureaucracy where doctors are free to care (gratis, I suppose, by his implication) for patients without extraneous factors. His solution? A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT run healthcare system. I'm guessing he never had the privilege to work at a VA, with its indifferent employees, inefficient system, never ending paperwork, 'too full, do it yourself' consultants and overall depressing atmosphere. Perhaps he should do some moonlighting and discover the wonders of the VA himself.

This is a good book for anyone practicing medicine or thinking about it. Interesting perspective. It was WAY funnier the first time I read it, prior to practicing, but it rings home a lot of interesting concepts.

Well written with strong emotional content. Tough and truthful---scary for new interns and devistating for newbies! Possibly will deter some readers from considering medicine as a career.! Yet all who have been closely tied to the medical community will see the text as truthful.

An enjoyable, funny, sad and insightful book. For those not in the trenches of the medical profession, some of the things described may seem far from reality, certainly only occuring in a fiction book. But these characters can be anywhere, in any hospital!

As a former rotating intern and surgical resident at Cook County this book best captures the black humor and insanity of a big city hospital house staff. Personally I remember less romance and more drinking but the spirit was the same. Today's PG MD's should read it for fun and us old farts for nostalgia.