The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death

This is a fascinating glimpse of what it's like to begin a career in medicine. Clearly it is important to be open-minded when working with medical students & remember that they are pursuing their goals under a great deal of pressure. Not only must they ingest & retain all the instructional materials, as well as proper techniques of hands-on care, but to be successful they must also develop many intuitive skills required to improve patient interactions that could quite probably make them more highly valued & appreciated as physicians. All this must be accomplished while balancing their personal lives & maintaining at least a basic to do list of daily activities! See if you would have what it takes to walk in their shoes.

I am entering my first year of Medical school and this was a required summer reading assignment, but I have to say that it was worth it. This book is a collection of essays that tell the stories of actually students and their experiences with patients, healthcare and with finding themselves as physicians and caregivers. The stories aren't always happy but they are realistic and I appreciate the honesty.

Well written and easy to read. I wish it could have been a longer book with more people sharing their experiences.

Every pre-med and medical student should read this book. As I was told by a doctor that I was working with, med students tend to lose their humanity in medical school. I think the essays in this book are inspirational and could help a weary med student during clinical rotations and residency to not lose sight of their purpose. Doctors are healers, not automatons.

This book gives an inside look at the experiences of many third year medical students as they endure the clinical rotations. Each chapter is written by a different medical student. The title is quite appropro, as well as reading the nuts and bolts of learning to be a doctor, the reader gets a glimpse of the innter thoughts, the "soul" of these medical students. I recommend this book especially for relatives and friends of medical students, to get a feel for what the med student is experiencing, both the visible activities, and invisible thought process of the future doctors in training.

I was associated with doctors for about 30 years via the pharmaceutical business......they are just commodities ...like peanut butter,,,,,very few are the quality of JIF...most are just store brands....but they all act like Jif......even as a patient....and an educated patient...you are viewed as a "piece of meat"...do they ever hear anyone...and as I read this essay....it reconfirmed everything I have observed in 30 years of dealing with doctors....ego driven....money motivated......hippocratic oath/.//// lip service at best......and this book affirmed that to me....I thought it would be interesting to read due to my perspective.....honestly I was dissappointed that it was all reaffirmed.....I like the title...soul of a doctor......is there such a thing

As the Mom of a resident I so enjoyed the 'behind the scenes' glimpse into medical students' education of patient care.

As a long time physician, I found this an interesting read. For the lay person, it highlights many of the struggles that physicians dael with as we learn that medicine is an art and not a science. The old training was to distance yourselves from the patient emotionally but luckily for me, my father was a primary care MD in the mold of Marcus Welby and the personal touch is valuable in every specialty. It would have been nice to get a little more background on each author. Also, this is Harvard Medical School so the experience might be skewed by being at an academic mecca.

Paper quality and general condition not up to the mark . I purchased it as a gift for someone but this product looks cheap

Loved it...very unique and a must read, I loved reading it every night. A+. Made for any premed or med student.

stories were realistic.