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READ MORE! It does not matter what you read as long as you continue to hone your reading and comprehension skills. As your reading improves, you will find it easier to cope with your college coursework. Success on the DAT, MCAT, OAT and other admissions tests depend upon good reading skills. In most professional school studies, you will be expected to read and comprehend as much as, if not more than, you do now as an undergraduate. Also, you will be busy. You will not have the time to re-read material. After graduation from professional school, you may not need to read as many textbooks as before, but you will need to keep current on many aspects of medicine, drugs, and governmental regulations as well as those of insurance or health care maintenance organizations. If you hope to become a health professional who has a life outside of your practice, you should practice, now, reading with the intent to improve....

-from Words to the Wise; Pre-Health Professional Student; HPAP

TRAINING

• Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal
• sir William Osler, Aequanimitas
• 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
• Edited by Mike Magee, M.D.,The 50 Most Positive Doctors in America, An illustrated, coffee table size book published by Spencer Books, Ltd., Canada
• Charles Lebaron, Gentle Vengenance
• Melvin Konner, M.D., Becoming a Doctor: A Journey of Initiation in Medical School
• Geri-Ann Galanti, Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals
• Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought
• 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).

PRACTICE

• 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
• 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
• Edited by Richard Reynolds, M.D. & John Stone, M.D. On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays
• Sherwin B. Nuland, The Biography of Medicine
• Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die
• Sherwin B. Nuland, Doctors
• Leonard Laster, M.D. 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

PATIENTS

• 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, 1990
• Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness
• Edited by Jon Mukan, Articulations
• 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 (out of print check your libraries)
• Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
• Hilfiker David, Not all of us are Saints, Hill and Wang 1994
• George Eliot, Middlemarch
• 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

 

HOSPITALS

• Michael Crichton, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained, 1989
• Anton Chekhov, Ward Six and Other Stories
• Harlan Gibbs, MD and Alan Duncan Ross, The Medicine of ER, or How We Almost Die, Basic Books, 1996
• 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