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The Intern Blues: The Timeless Classic About the Making of a Doctor Editorial Review:
While supervising a small group of interns at a major New York medical center, Dr. Robert Marion asked three of them to keep a careful diary over the course of a year. Andy, Mark, and Amy vividly describe their real-life lessons in treating very sick children; confronting child abuse and the awful human impact of the AIDS epidemic; skirting the indifference of the hospital bureaucracy; and overcoming their own fears, insecurities, and constant fatigue. Their stories are harrowing and often funny; their personal triumph is unforgettable.
This updated edition of The Intern Blues includes a new preface from the author discussing the status of medical training in America today and a new afterword updating the reader on the lives of the three young interns who first shared their stories with readers more than a decade ago.
Customer Reviews: Marion is my favorite !! Another book by Marion that is an easy read and really tells the whole story behind becoming a doctor. There are several interns that tell their story through internship. Great book if you are interested in the meidcal field.
Well Written I served a nine-month rotating internship at St. Joseph Hospital in Denver Colorado. Having done much of my training at Tulane Medical Center, I decided I wanted to be in a Louisiana public hospital for my residency. I returned to New Orleans and completed my internship and residency at Charity.
Although the internships in the book took place at large New York City hospitals, like Charity they both primarily serve medically indigent populations.
The emotional struggles (combined with the organizational conflicts) described in the book hit home. These individual stories highlight the common thread of experience shared by all physician's who refined their skills in public ERs.
Gives a good idea about residency This book is not intended to be entertaining, it's meant to portray the hard year of internship. But somehow, it still manages to be a good read. For someone who wants to get an idea about what it's like to take call every fourth night and get very little sleep, dealing with life and death in a very difficult arena, it is a nice start. The book is composed of transcribed audio recordings from the interns on their experiences.
I'm not going to lie. They whine a lot. If you don't have the patience for that or don't like to be unloaded upon, this may not be the book for you. And it can be depressing, and droning, and hard to read. What keeps you going is the urge to know what becomes of these interns.
They're actually pretty entertaining themselves. The two guys, Mark and Andy, have a great sarcastic sense of humor that keeps the book afloat and that the young woman and new mother, Amy, lacks. Her chapters move the slowest.
While it isn't the most optimistic in the world (One of Mark's excerpts reads, "There was a point there where I swear I was this close to taking all the charts, throwing them out the window, and saying 'Forget it! I'm sorry I ever applied to medical school! I never really wanted to be a doctor anyway!') and advises against the intern-to-be reading, it is ultimately a satisfying and honest account, without any processing or gloss. It is gritty, and it is real, from nights in the Bronx's Jonas Bronck ER to the intern's personal lives. They're young and inexpirienced doctors without yet the trademark sense of entitlement and confidence. We watch as they grow into their white coat.
Tedious at times but still a good and quick read I agree with some reviewers that the book is tedious at times and pleasant and entailing at others. I also agree with the author that the experiences in this book are not unique. The book is written in a journal style summarizing each of the three interns' own 'tape-recorded' account of their stories on a month by month basis. Hence, at times you may think the book is not very well structured or written because the whole book really seems like a word-for-word retyping of what each intern said to their tape recorder.
It's tedious because so many times the reader (me in specific) gets aggrevated with a constant "same old, same old" coming from the interns. Pretty much, every month the interns complain about exactly the same thing: long and dehumanizing hours, lack of sleep, lack of social contact with other peers (Amy keeps on talking about her daughter all the time, which also gets frustrating after a while). What makes the book interesting, though, are some of the stories that the interns manage to describe in between all the complaining: stories about a mother of a patient trying to kill an intern because she thought the intern molested the little infant by doing a straight catheterization (actually that was the author's story). But nonetheless, plenty of very interesting experiences.
Also, what's nice about the book is that you get a perspective from both males and a female, interns with no kids and a kid. Unfortunately no experiences from completely single interns, but Mark comes close.
One thing I didn't like about the stories, but got used to it, was that some aren't explained to the end. They stop as if in the middle of the most interesting moment where you want to know more as to what happened to the patient. That's because once these interns sign the patient out to another unit they lose contact with that patient and only rarely follow up. You realize soon that this book isn't about the medical diagnosis and treatments but about the experiences, fears, anxiety, and emotional dilemmas these interns must go through to survive.
Overall, I liked it quite a bit and still recommend it. But don't read it if you're (for example) a fourth year med student who is easily disturbed and already frightened about the internship. Reading it might only stress you more.
Making of a Doctor This book is simply funny. I bought the book to help me in my mid-career crisis. I am currently and Emergency Department nurse and I was feeling bored in my job. After reading this book I had to laugh and appreciate the views of the interns. Interns in the ER are funny and procedure crazy. The "pain and Agony" each of them experiences is very descriptive. If you are looking into a career in medicine it is definitely a must read. I realized that I can't see myself taking a step back and doing "scut" and re-learning a new frame of mind. The plus side though, when a new intern is the area I make sure I help them out. I recommend this book for anyone.
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