so basically i want a fiction (or possibly a memoir) about medicine but accurate to the job. really don’t want anything romance or greys adjacent.
a few medical fiction books seem to not the job right or sensationalize working in medicine. would like something where i could even learn something but it’s a narrative.
by triplehelix11
7 Comments
Maybe 5 Days at Memorial. It’s the story of the days at a hospital following Hurricane Katrina
not the ER but i really loved The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue. It’s basically a minute by minute fictional account of working in an Irish maternity ward in 1918.
*Call the Midwife* is actually a pretty damn good book. It’s literally a memoir written by a nurse midwife who worked with a really destitute populace after WWII. There’s stuff in there that will really change your views.
I haven’t seen The Pitt, but Adam Kay’s medical memoir *This Is Going To Hurt* is a great read, and eye opening.
David Oshinsky’s history of Bellevue hospital is SO GOOD if you like history.
Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital by Dr. Eric Manheimer is the book that New Amsterdam was based on.
Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland is the memoirs of a psychiatrist in the ED there.
Books like Mountains Beyond Mountains won’t capture the ER urgency but are amazing.
How about one of the scariest medical “fiction but based on real events” books I’ve ever read, The Hot Zone – about Ebola 😬 it’s not a drama like in a hospital though so maybe not for you
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam —short stories following a group of doctors. Written by a Canadian doctor