Saturday 2 May 2015

Medical literature/arts

Crucial Interventions - an arty book of surgery
So, with a view to a broader take on medicine, I'm trying to read a few novels and absorb a little medical culture in between the scores of facts that I'm learning in the weeks.

So far:
Morris Gibson - One Man's Medicine (James Herriott-esque tale of working in Hull as a GP)
Atul Gawande - Complications (learning on the job as a surgeon)
Jed Mercurio - Cardiac Arrest (1990s TV dark drama/comedy series of horrific hours on the NHS wards)
BBC - Inside Harley Street (2015; exploring the world of complimentary therapies, private consultants; plastic surgery etc. in London)
Thomas Lilti - Hippocrate (2015: Film about a French intern dealing with his mistakes, seeing that experience counts more than rank, the food&cultural underpinning in a French hospital, the importance of good clinical skills with the patients)
Samuel Shem - House of God (cynically written, reminds me of Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye, actually too cynically written for me to finish)
Atul Gawande - Reith Lectures (more on the theme of learning and making mistakes in medicine)
Matthew Syed - Bounce (a helpful take on the benefits of practice and how to avoid becoming preoccupied with notions of talent)
Richard Hollingham - Blood and Guts (a history of surgery, including a great take on the 19th century developments of anaesthesia, haemostasis and aseptic technique)
Henry Marsh - Do no Harm (memoirs of a neurosurgeon, including the thrill of the operating microscope, dealing with dying patients, greiving relatives, challenging NHS managers, and the decline of the doctor's omnipotence)
Steven Soderbergh - The Knick (surgical drama set in 1900; main protagonist played by Clive Owen - a cocaine addicted creative surgeon)
Mark Porter on BBC R4 - Inside Health (picking a local health topic each week; Tuesdays at 9pm, not particularly challenging, has a British GP feel to it)
Claudia Hammond on BBC World Service - Health Check (picking a global health topic each week; Wednesdays at 8.30pm, has an international feel to it)
Lisa Sanders - Every Patient Tells a Story (from the technical advisor to House, MD - insight into the medical life)
Kevin McKidd - Grey's Anatomy (remarkably well-scripted drama about surgeons starting out on their internship rotations in the US)
Victoria Pile - Green Wing (sitcom from 2004-7, dead funny, set in an NHS hospital)
Dan Sefton - Trust Me (drama from 2017, nurse posing as a doctor)
James Wood - Quacks (comedy from 2017, surgeons set in Victorian Britain, moderate at best)


In the planning:
BBC3 - Junior Doctors (2011-2013; exploring the trouble around being an F1)
Max Pemberton - Trust Me I'm a junior doctor (columnist)
Daniel Kahnemann - Thinking Fast and Slow (on human rationality and irrationality)
Atul Gawande - Better (a surgeon's broad visits to and review of what improves medical interventions - from Iraq to India)

>>list updated as it grows<<

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Medical student, keen on travel, piano, and the outdoors. Past work in psychological research and healthcare IT consulting.