What you read may not always be as important as that you do read. Continue to hone your reading (and comprehension) skills. While I read because I enjoy it, there are some benefits that reach beyond the pleasure of discovering new worlds and ideas.
Anecdotes indicate that improving reading speed and comprehension helps with the MCAT, DAT or other tests pre-health students take. Furthermore, in most professional school courses you will be expected to read and comprehend a huge amount of information, often muchmore than is required of undergraduates. After graduation from professional school, you may not be constantly reading textbooks, but you will need to keep current on developments in your field.
Form the reading habit now ... keep a book or magazine with to read when you have a few spare moments. Set aside some time each week just to read. Below is a list that was initially compiled by Dr. David Egloff at Oberlin College. I've added to it, and you are welcome to e-mail me with your suggestions at kdeoliva@mail.smu.edu.
Article for the Month
Hidden Ethics of Overseas Electives
Check out a book people are talking about
How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman. Call number for the SMU library: R723.5 .G75 2007.
On Becoming a Physician
- Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal
- David Svahn, editor, Let Me Listen to Your Heart, 2001
- Rosemary Jones, Educational and Career Opportunities in Alternative Medicine (Pima Publishing, 1998)
- Dianne Boulerice Lyons, Planning Your Career In Alternative Medicine: A Guide to Degree and Certificate Programs in Alternative Healthcare
- Ellen Lerner Rothman, White Coat: Becoming a Doctor at Harvard Medical, 1999
- Perri Klass, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure, 1988
- Perri Klass, Baby Doctor,1993
- Charles LeBaron, Gentle Vengeance
- David Ewing Duncan, Residents: The Perils and Promise of Educating Young Doctors
- Ruth B. Purtilo & Amy Haddad, Health Professional and Patient Interaction,5th Edition, 1996
- Mike Magee, M.D., editor, The 50 Most Positive Doctors in America, An illustrated, coffee table size book published by Spencer Books, Ltd., Canada
- Melvin Konner, M.D., Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical Schoo
- Geri-Ann Galanti,Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals, 1991
- Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought, 1933
- Marie L. Lassey, William R. Lassey, and Martin Jinks, Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms
- Howard S. Becker et al. Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, 1991
- Robert Marion Learning to Play God: The Coming of Age of a Young Doctor, 1991
- Robert Marion The Intern Blues
- 270 Ways to Put Your Talent to Work in the Health Field:Extensive guide to health careers; includes career descriptions, plus information on work setting, education, and salary for more than 270 careers. Also lists contact information for more than 120 organizations offering additional information. (October 1998). Available in the Biological Sciences Resource Room.
MEDICAL PRACTICE
- Jerome Groopman, Second Opinions: Eight Clinical Dramas of Decision Making on the Front Lines of Medicine, 2000, (Penguin Books).
- Pamela Grim, Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death from the ER, 2000, (Warner Books).
- Michael Ruhlman, Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit, 2003, (Penguin Books).
- Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, 2003 (Random House).
- Laurence Savett, The Human Side of Medicine, 2002 (Auburn House)
- Institute of Medicine, The Right Thing to Do, The Smart Thing to Do, 2001 (National Academy Press)
- Atul Gawande, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, 2002 (Metropolitan Books)
- Ben Carson, Gifted Hands, the Ben Carson Story. 1990
- Bruce Dan, A Piece of My Mind: A Collection of Essays from JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association),1988
- Edited by Charlene Breedlove, Uncharted Lines: Poems from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
- David Hilfiker, Healing the Wounds: A Physician Looks at his Work, 1988
- Richard Selzer, Letters to a Young Doctor, 1982 (Harcourt, Brace & Co)
- Howard Spiro et al. (eds.): Empathy and the Practice of Medicine, Beyond the Pill and Scapel, 1993
- John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
- William Carlos Williams, The Doctor Stories, 1984
- John McPhee, Heirs of General Practice, 1988
- Philip Zazove, When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes: Memoirs of a Deaf Doctor, 1993
- Richard Reynolds, & John Stone, (editors) On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays, 1995
- Sherwin B. Nuland, The Biography of Medicine
- Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die: reflections on life’s final chapter, 1994
- Sherwin B. Nuland, Doctors
- Leonard Laster, Life After Medical School, Thirty-two Doctors Describe How They Shaped Their Medical Careers
- Dominique Lapierre, Beyond Love
- Patch Adams with Maureen Mylander, Gesundheit (out of print check your libraries)
- Patch Adams and Pamela Jacobs Housecalls How We Can All Heal The World One Visit at a Time
- Melba Colgrove, Harold Bloomfield, & Peter McWilliams How to Survive the Loss of a Love
- Mehmet Oz, et al Healing from the Heart, The Power of Complementary Medicine, 1998
- John Stone, In the Country of Hearts: Journeys in the Art of Medicine, 1992
- Lane Gerber Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas in Doctors' Lives, 1983
- David Hartman & B. Asbell, White Coat, White Cane: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Blind Physician, 1978
- Janet Bickel, Women in Medicine: Getting in, Growing, and Advancing
- Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom, 1996
- Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
- Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think
PATIENTS
- David Biro, One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient, 2000 (Vintage Books)
- Kenneth Iserson, Death to Dust: what happens to dead bodies?, 1994
- Alan Lightman, The Diagnosis, 2000
- Arthur Frank, At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, 1992
- Susanna Kaysen, Girl Interrupted, 1993
- Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals, 1980
- Gilda Radner, It's Always Something, 1990
- Jody Heymann, Equal Partners, 1995
- Edward Rosenbaum, A Taste of My Own Medicine (=The Doctor), 1988
- Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 1984
- William Stryon, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, 1992
- Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness
- Edited by Jon Mukan, Articulations: the body and illness in poetry, 1994
- Edited by Michael A. Lacombe, On Being a Doctor (poems and essays)
- Edited by Angela Belli and Jack Coulehan, Blood and Bone
- Harold Bursztajn, Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How Patients, Families and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainity, 1981 (out of print check your libraries)
- Abraham Verghese, My Own Country, 1994
- Hilfiker David, Not all of us are Saints, Hill and Wang 1994
- George Eliot, Middlemarch, 1910
- Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- Arthur Kleinman, The Illness Narratives
- Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom
- Robert McCrum My Year Off, Recovering Life After a Stroke, 1998
- Reynolds Price A Whole New Life, 1994
- Simon and Karen Fox, What Can I Say?
- Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
HOSPITALS
- Michael Crichton, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, 1989
- Anton Chekhov, Ward Six and Other Stories
- Harlan Gibbs, and Alan Duncan Ross, The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Basic Books, 1996
TOUGH DECISIONS
- Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness
- Peter E. Dans, MD, Doctors in the Movies: Boil the Water and Just Say Aah
- Stephen Sawicki, Animal Hospital, 1997
- Susan Garrett, Taking Care of Our Own: A Year in the Life of a Small Hospital, 1995
- Lisa Belkin, First Do No Harm, 1993
- Lori Arviso Alvord , The Scalpel and the Silver Bear
- Joycelyn Elders, Joycelyn Elders, MD: From Sharecropper's Daughter to Surgeon General of the USA
- Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Bird Sings, 1998 (Tor Books)
- Eileen Daniel, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Health and Society.
AGING
OTHER PERSPECTIVES
- Elena Avila (with Joy Parker), Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health, 1999, (Penguin Putnam, Inc.).
- Howard Brody, Stories of Sickness, 1988
- Robert Coles, The Call of Stories, Teaching and the Moral Imagination1990
- Robert Coles, The Call of Service: A Witness to Idealism, 1993
- Robert Coles, A Robert Coles Omnibus,1993
- Kathryn Hunter, Doctor as Stories: The Narrative Structure of Medical Knowledge, 1991
- Emily Martin, Flexible Bodies: Tracking Immunity in American Culture from the Days of Polio to the Age of AIDS, 1994
- Andrew Weil, Health and Healing, 1988
- Susan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, 1991
- Anne Hawkins, Reconstructing Illness: Studies in Pathography, 1993
- Randollph M. Nesse & George C. Williams, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine,1996
- Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, 1992
MEDICAL ETHICS
- Amnesty International, Ethical Codes and Declarations Relevant to the Health Professions, 2000, (Amnesty International).
- Jordan Goodman, Anthony McElligott and Lara Marks, (editors) Useful Bodies: Humans in the Service of Medical Science in the Twentieth Century, 2003 (The Johns Hopkins University Press).
- Samuel Gorovitz, Doctors' Dilemmas
- Samuel Gorovitz, Drawing The Line, Life, Death, and Ethical Choices in an American Hospital, 1993
- Eileen Nechas and Denise Foley,Unequal Treatment, What You Don't Know About How Women are Treated by the Medical Community
- Charles L. Bosk, Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure
- Gregory E. Pence, Classic Cases in Medical Ethics: Accounts of Cases that Have Shaped Medical Ethics with Philosophical, Legal, and Historical Background
- J. Warren Salmon, editor, The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Perspectives and Implications
HISTORY
- Nina Rattner Gelbart, The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray, 1962, (University of California Press).
- Elizabeth Silverthorne & Geneva Fulgham, Women Pioneers in Texas Medicine, 1997, (Texas A&M University Press).
- James Harvey, Young American Health Quackery: Collected Essays
- Stuart Moore, Chiropractic in American: The History of a Medical Alternative, 1993
- Norman Gevitz, The D.O.s: Osteopathic Medicine in America, 1982
- Sheil Rothman, Living in the Shadow of Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History, 1994
- Harvey Young, The Medical Messiahs, A Social History of Health Quackery in Twentieth-Century America, 1967
- Norman Gevitz, Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, 1988
- Jeffrey Fister, The Plaque Makers, 1994
- Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine, 1982
- Irvine Loudon, Editor, Western Medicine, An Illustrated History, 1997
- George Northup, Osteopathic Medicine – an American Reformation, 1979
- Lori Alvord and Elizabeth VanPelt, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: the first Navajo woman surgeon, 1999 (Bantam Books)
VETERINARY MEDICINE
- William Karesh, Appointment at the Ends of the World: memoirs of a wildlife veterinarian, 1999
- James Herriot, All Things Bright and Beautiful, 1973
- James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small, 1972
- James Herriot, All Things Wise and Wonderful, 1977
- James Herriot, The Lord God Made Them All
- Loretta Gage and Nancy Gage, If Wishes Were Horses. 1995
- James A. Porter, Doctor, Matilda’s in Labor
- Robert M. Miller, Most of my Patients Are Animals
- Frank Manley, A Veterinary Odyssey
- Jean Ware and Hugh Hunt, The Several Lives of a Victorian Vet
- Sue Drum and H. E. Whiteley, Women in Veterinary Practice: Profiles of Success
- Seymour Gasofer, In Sickness and In Love
- Frederic Frey, Phyllis, Phallus, Genghis Cohen, and Other Creatures I Have Known
- Willard C. Hasselbush, Mack Morris: Veterinarian
- David Taylor, Vet On the Wild Side
- David Taylor, Is There A Doctor in the Zoo?, 1978
- David Taylor, Zoo Vet: Adventure of a Wild Animal Doctor
- David Taylor, Next Panda, Please
- J. Stirling, On Four Legs and Two
- W. M. Henderson, A Man of the Country
- T. W. Stobo, A Vet’s Tale – the Passing Years
- C. M. Ford, Aleen Cust, Veterinary Surgeon. Britain’s First Woman Vet
- Sally Haddock, The Making of a Woman Vet