What readers think of Internal Medicine, plus links to write your own review.

To become a physician, I believe, requires as much of a spiritual calling as it does to become a priest, minister or rabbi. If a fat paycheck is the primary motivator for a career in medicine, I suspect that person will not survive residency. Exhibit A: This book.

Written by a practicing internist a decade after he completed his three-year residency in internal medicine, this book will give the non-medical person a hint of what this grueling training is all about. I say a hint, because simply reading the book will not make you feel what all residents must endure: the utter exhaustion of seemingly endless shifts, the pressure to remember so much information at a moment's notice, the mind-numbing paperwork and the heartbreak of losing patients. But it will give you more empathy for your own doctor.

The writing is superb, and while it's nonfiction, it is as engrossing as a novel. Unlike other types of medical residencies, internal medicine is a kind of medical catch-all. These residents do it all--from the emergency room to intensive care, from clinics to hospice. And that is what makes this book so compelling. Author Terrence Holt takes you along as he experiences it--the adrenaline-pumping code blue, a young woman who commits suicide by Tylenol (a death that is excruciatingly drawn-out and painful), in-home hospice care with a woman whose mouth has been eaten away by skin cancer, a psychiatric hospital where two patients do horrific and gruesome things to hurt themselves (no spoilers here), and being with a family as the matriarch dies. There is more. A lot more.

While some of the stories are disturbing (you won't want to read this book while eating lunch), they will all give you an appreciation for the medical profession. My hope is that if I am ever hospitalized, I have a resident who is as caring as Dr. Holt. It's a fascinating book, and I highly recommend it.