Intern, Sandeep Jauhar
Intern, Sandeep Jauhar
3 Rating(s)
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Intern
A Doctor's Initiation

Author: Sandeep Jauhar

Narrator: Sandeep Jauhar

Unabridged: 10 hr 39 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/29/2008


Synopsis

Intern is Sandeep Jauhar's story of his days and nights in residency at a busy hospital in New York City, a trial that led him to question our every assumption about medical care today. Residency—and especially the first year, called internship—is legendary for its brutality. Working eighty hours or more per week, most new doctors spend their first year asking themselves why they wanted to be doctors in the first place.

Jauhar's internship was even more harrowing than most: he switched from physics to medicine in order to follow a more humane calling—only to find that medicine put patients' concerns last. He struggled to find a place among squadrons of cocky residents and doctors. He challenged the practices of the internship in The New York Times, attracting the suspicions of the medical bureaucracy. Then, suddenly stricken, he became a patient himself—and came to see that today's high-tech, high-pressure medicine can be a humane science after all.

Now a thriving cardiologist, Jauhar has all the qualities you'd want in your own doctor: expertise, insight, a feel for the human factor, a sense of humor, and a keen awareness of the worries that we all have in common. His beautifully written memoir explains the inner workings of modern medicine with rare candor and insight.

About Sandeep Jauhar

Sandeep Jauhar is the bestselling author of several acclaimed books on medical topics: Intern, Doctored, and Heart: A History, which was named a best book of 2018 by The Mail on Sunday, Science Friday, and the Los Angeles Public Library, and was a PBS NewsHour/New York Times book club pick; it was also a finalist for the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize. A practicing physician, Jauhar writes regularly for the opinion section of The New York Times. His TED Talk on the emotional heart was one of the ten most-watched TED Talks of 2019.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Shelah on September 05, 2009

I'll admit that I'm curious about the lives of the doctors who care for me and my family. How many kids do they have? Where do they go on vacation? Are they happy? But if they're not happy, do I really want to know? In Intern, Sandeep Jauhar describes the crisis he went through during his intern yea......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on August 27, 2010

This book was different than I had expected it to be. I had expected it to be funnier than it was along the lines of "The Nanny Diaries" but for doctors. That said, I still enjoyed the book. As others have said, Dr. Jauhar's writing style is sensitive and insightful, but also a bit self-indulg......more

Goodreads review by Lern on July 27, 2024

this book was Written By A Man: no woman mentioned in this book, whether physician colleague, a patient in need, or his own wife was exempt from superfluous descriptions of level of physical attractiveness......more

Goodreads review by Sintija on June 07, 2021

The life of a person deciding and becoming a doctor is guaranteed to be full of ambivalent experiences, intense responsibility, requirement to learn seas of knowledge fast, and survive through it all. When you read about personal stories like Jauhar's, you learn to respect the intensity that this pr......more

Goodreads review by Katie on July 28, 2019

A brutally (almost shockingly so) honest look at a doctor's first year of residency, the internship year. The "bitch" year, the personal assistant year, the abused newbie year. This author is the opposite of everyone who always knew they wanted to be a doctor. He had a PhD in physics, and then had s......more


Quotes

“In Jauhar's wise memoir of his two-year ordeal of doubt and sleep deprivation at a New York hospital, he takes readers to the heart of every young physician's hardest test: to become a doctor yet remain a human being.” —Time

“Brutally frank . . . The inside look at the workings of the medical internship system is fascinating.” —William Grimes, The New York Times

“Jauhar's stories are timeless [and] interesting.” —Barron H. Lerner, The Washington Post

“A vivid portrait of the culture of a New York City hospital, with its demanding hierarchy and sometimes indifferent cruelty.” —Vincent Lam, The New York Times Book Review

“Very few books can make you laugh and cry at the same time. This is one of them. Sandeep reveals himself in this book as he takes us on a wondrous journey through one of the most difficult years of his life. It is mandatory reading for anyone who has been even the slightest bit curious about how a doctor gets trained, and for physicians, it is a valuable record of our initiation.” —Sanjay Gupta, CNN medical correspondent and author of Chasing Life

Intern will resonate not only with doctors, but with anyone who has struggled with the grand question: ‘what should I do with my life?' In a voice of profound honesty and intelligence, Sandeep Jauhar gives us an insider's look at the medical profession, and also a dramatic account of the psychological challenges of early adulthood.” —Akhil Sharma, author of An Obedient Father

“Told of here is a time of travail and testing--a doctor's initiation into the trials of a demanding yet hauntingly affirming profession--all conveyed by a skilled, knowing writer whose words summon memories of his two great predecessors, Dr. Anton Chekhov and Dr. William Carlos Williams: a noble lineage to which this young doctor's mind, heart, and soul entitle him to belong.” —Robert Coles

Intern is not just a gripping tale of becoming a doctor. It's also a courageous critique, a saga of an immigrant family living (at times a little uneasily) the American dream, and even a love story. A great read and a valuable addition to the literature--and I use the word advisedly--of medical training.” —Melvin Konner, M.D. Ph.D., author of Becoming a Doctor

“In this era when medical shows abound on TV, Jauhar demonstrates the power of the written word in the hands of a sensitive, thoughtful observer and an experienced, gifted writer. Intern is a compelling, accurate and heartfelt chronicle of what that year is really like. It will be the standard by which future such memoirs will be judged.” —Abraham Verghese, author of My Own Country and The Tennis Partner

“Excellent, well-written... Jauhar captures vividly the uncertainty, fear, and extreme exhaustion that dominates the (residency) experience... As one reads this emotionally powerful story, it becomes clear that the culture in which the interns work is profoundly important to their experience.” —Katharine Treadway, The New England Journal of Medicine

“This insider's account of life on the ward forces us to contemplate our own mortality. And we emerge from it all with a greater respect for medical professionals and their patients.” —Peter McDermott, America

“An exceptional accomplishment... beautifully written and incredibly insightful... by far the best memoir of medical student or resident days yet published.” —Kenneth Ludmerer, author of Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education

“Here Jauhar's skills as both storyteller and compassionate physician are at their best; his encounters illustrate the complexity of real-life clinical decision-making. ...The overall feeling that emerges is that of struggle: patients struggle against the illogical oddities of a broken health care system and less frequently they struggle against their clinicians, but most often they struggle along with their clinicians to reach an acceptable or at least meaningful compromise with the injustices that come with illness. Certainly there are no easy answers, and few writers have conveyed this truth more forcefully than Jauhar. ...Those who enjoy good writing for its own sake will savor the crafted texture of this narrative. ...Jauhar captures the essence of how it feels to be a present-day physician in residency training. ...So long as training to become a physician remains a dynamic process, memoirs like this will continue to serve an important role in exploring and explaining this process to the patients that physicians serve and, perhaps no less, to physicians themselves.” —S. Ryan Gregory, MD, The Journal of the American Medical Association

“Jauhar, like most of us, is neither a saint nor an apostle of medicine. He is a little sarcastic, a little bitter, a little naive, a little smarter, and a little stupider than everyone else; in short, the character he writes for himself is the perfect protagonist for a medical internship. As he flinches from the gauntlet run, the grace of his prose allows us to feel every blow. To this young physician, it brought back visceral feelings, and I hope this is not the last literary gut punch we receive from Jauhar.” —Noah Raizman, The Lancet Review

“Intense.” —New York

“This is no made-for-TV sitcom: Dr. House wouldn't last a night in Dr. Jauhar's world.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

“Following in the path paved by doctor-writers like Lewis Thomas and Richard Selzer, Jauhar writes with grace, precision and passion. What makes him such a stimulating companion is his willingness to couple candid insights into the state of modern American medicine with equally revealing glimpses into the soul of a young doctor.” —Shelf Awareness

“Jauhar's candid account of his stressful journey is enlightening, educational and eye-opening. After ten successful years in the profession, the author dolefully admits that he is unfazed by the 'small injustices' in hospitals today. Required reading for anyone seriously considering a career in medicine.” —Kirkus Reviews

“What sets Jauhar's internship story apart from the norm is his candor.” —Booklist

“Honest and vivid... A well-written medical memoir.” —Library Journal