Resident On Call: A Doctor’s Reflections On His First Years At Mass General (2014) (Epub) by Scott Rivkees

Description

In turn heartbreaking, irreverent, moving—and at times raucously humorous—one of the nation’s leading pediatric researchers recounts his first years as a newly minted, stuggling, and insecure doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. A graduate of a state university medical school, Scott Rivkees was competing with elite students from some of the most prestigious schools in the country. Nervous and uncertain, he worked unholy hours with patients ranging from indigent street people to celebrity guests drawn to the reputation and care offered by Mass General.

Along the way he learned what medical school textbooks don’t teach: how to deal with immense pressure, exhaustion, unruly patients, mysterious conditions, the joy of saving a life, and the wrenching suddenness of losing a patient, more often than not a young child. His resident education did not prevent him from losing his sense of irony and humor as he recounts bleary nights on the town, the allure of young nurses, substandard housing, and the value of pricking an inflated ego.

User’s Reviews

In these loosely strung-together anecdotes, a seasoned physician looks back on his training as a pediatric resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, affectionately dubbed “Man’s Greatest Hospital.” His reminiscing charts the arrogance and ambition of youth giving way to feelings of inadequacy and humility, and, much later, the launching of professionalism and even wisdom. Emotional fatigue, sleep-deprivation, and expectations of perfection are unremitting. Faculty, difficult patients, and the hierarchy of medical apprenticeship are recalled. Rivkees recounts some tragic cases that he was involved with as a resident: an infant infected with herpes virus that ate holes in her brain tissue, newborn conjoined twins who did not survive the surgery to separate them, and brothers with burns on 95 percent of their bodies. Readers receive a heavy dose of the Boston setting—neighborhood bars, Fenway Park, the Charles River—and descriptions of the author’s colleagues, dating experiences, and pranks. The making of a doctor is long, grueling, and engrossing. There are many memoirs of medical training out there, and while Rivkees’ is not among the very best, it is frank and certainly of interest. –Tony Miksanek

“Rivkees . . . documents his time at Mass General with wit, humor, and at times, sadness. Just two months out of medical school, Rivkees encountered his first meningitis case—an eight-week-old girl. It’s cases like this that make the book a worthwhile read because we get to see what happens inside one of the country’s top hospitals through the eyes of a green freshman.”

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