Best Books For Aspiring Doctors | 10 Best Books For Aspiring Doctors

Here are some good books for Aspiring Doctors.

1. On Death and Dying

On Death and Dying

Author : Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Although most areas of human experience are nowadays discussed freely and openly, the subject of death is still surrounded by conventional attitudes and reticence that offer only fragile comfort because they evade the real issues. The dying may thus be denied the opportunity of sharing their feelings and discussing their needs with family, friends, or hospital staff. Although receiving devoted medical care, a dying patient is often socially isolated and avoided, since professional staff and students can find contact painful and embarrasing. Aware of the strains imposed on all sides by this situation, Dr Kubler-Ross established a seminar at the University of Chicago to consider the implications of terminal illness for patients and for those involved in their care. Patients invited to talk about their experience often found great relief in expressing their fear and anger and were able to move towards a state of acceptance and peace.

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2. How Doctors Think

How Doctors Think

Author : Julia Lobo

Updated with a new afterword containing additional advice, a physician discusses the thought patterns and actions that often lead to misdiagnosis on the part of health-care providers, and suggests methods that patients can use to improve communication and help doctors assess conditions more accurately. Reprint.

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3. What Doctors Feel

What Doctors Feel

Author : Danielle Ofri

While much has been written about the minds and methods of the medical professionals who save our lives, precious little has been said about their emotions. inicians and patients, understanding what doctors feel can make all the difference in giving and getting the best medical care.

Digging deep into the lives of doctors, Dr. Danielle Ofri examines the daunting range of emotions—shame, anger, empathy, frustration, hope, pride, occasionally despair, and sometimes even love—that permeate the contemporary doctor-patient connection. Drawing on scientific studies, including some surprising research, Dr. Ofri offers up an unflinching look at the impact of emotions on health care.

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4. The Checklist Manifesto

The Checklist Manifesto

Author : Atul Gawande

Acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy to tackle immensely complex problems with the humblest of techniques: the checklist. In riveting stories, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction and business of all kinds.

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5. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Author : Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, now an HBO film starring Oprah Winfrey & Rose Byrne Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortality’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . . Rebecca Skloot’s fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world. ‘No dead woman has done more for the living . . . A fascinating, harrowing, necessary book’ Hilary Mantel, Guardian ‘An extraordinary mix of memoir and science reveals the story of how one woman’s cells have saved countless lives’ Daily Telegraph ‘A heartbreaking account of racism and injustice . . . Moving and magnificent’ Metro

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6. Adventures of a Female Medical Detective – In Pursuit of Smallpox and AIDS

Adventures of a Female Medical Detective

Author : Mary Guinan, Anne D. Mather

In 1974, a young doctor arrived at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with one goal in mind: to help eradicate smallpox. The only woman physician in her class in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a two-year epidemiology training program, Mary Guinan soon was selected to join India's Smallpox Eradication Program, which searched out and isolated patients with the disease. By May of 1975, the World Health Organization declared Uttar Pradash smallpox-free. During her barrier-crossing career, Dr. Guinan met arms-seeking Afghan insurgents in Pakistan and got caught in the cross fire between religious groups in Lebanon. She treated some of the first AIDS patients and served as an expert witness in defense of a pharmacist who was denied employment for having HIV-leading to a landmark decision that still protects HIV patients from workplace discrimination. Randy Shilts's best-selling book on the epidemic, And the Band Played On, features her AIDS work. In Adventures of a Female Medical Detective, Guinan weaves together twelve vivid stories of her life in medicine, describing her individual experiences in controlling outbreaks, researching new diseases, and caring for patients with untreatable infections.

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7. When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air

Author : Paul Kalanithi

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity – the brain – and finally into a patient and a new father. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both.

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8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Author : Siddhartha Mukherjee

A magnificent, beautifully written biography of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles to cure, control and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee, doctor, researcher and award-winning science writer, examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience and perseverance, but also of hubris, arrogance and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out ‘war against cancer’. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories and deaths, told through the eyes of predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary.

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9. Intern: A Doctor's Initiation

Intern: A Doctor's Initiation

Author : Sandeep Jauhar

This book is a frank memoir of the cardiologist intern who mixes facts about his difficult childhood and complicated relationship with his father, his suffering after the suicide of the best friend, times of courting a new girlfriend together with his early days at New York Hospital. It is one of the best descriptions of what early days of doctors look like!

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10. Every Patient Tells a Story

Every Patient Tells a Story

Author : Lisa Sanders

This book is written by the same author who inspired the TV show House, MD with her New York Times Magazine “Diagnosis” column. In this work, Sanders looks at physical exams, tests and training behind complex diagnoses.

"The experience of being ill can be like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When I see patients in the hospital or in my office who are suddenly, surprisingly ill, what they really want to know is, ‘What is wrong with me?’ They want a road map that will help them manage their new surroundings. The ability to give this unnerving and unfamiliar place a name, to know it—on some level—restores a measure of control, independent of whether or not that diagnosis comes attached to a cure. Because, even today, a diagnosis is frequently all a good doctor has to offer."

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