When I was a nursing student, I was sitting at the nurses station and writing a rough draft of my patients notes for my supervising RN to read through before I put them in the file. One of the medical interns sat down next to me and asked me if I'd read The House of God. I thought he might have been trying to convince me to join some obscure religion. I hadn't, I warily told him so, and he threw his hands up in the air and said "You have to, you need to read it, it's real life put down on paper, and it will stop you going mad. Or make you feel better about going mad when you do get there. It certainly made me feel better about going mad. They tell us we should read it, but they never tell you nurses and that's a crime. So I'm telling you now. Have a good shift!". Then he bounced up out of his chair and disappeared to wherever doctors go when they're not making the place look messy and stealing the charts just before you need them.

It took me a while to track down this book, but now I have I can absolutely say that this intern was one hundred percent right. This book IS real life down on paper. Everything in it (with regards to patients, emotional turmoil, medical care, and bowel runs) is totally relate-able. It may be dated (all these references to the Nixon era make only the vaguest sense to anybody in my generation who is not American) but it is still relevant, and after my first year out, it was cathartic to read this book and see that it isn't just me. Other people before me have felt the same helplessness and cynicism and experienced the same highs and lows, regardless of when they started or whether they're medical or nursing or anything else.

And the Laws of the House of God? Are hilariously, wonderfully, absolutely true.

It feels like one of my attendings could have wrote this, thinking they were being witty and sarcastic, and teaching a valuable moral lesson, but really just being cynical.

People say it's satire, and ok, I'm not sure, but the books that I think are satire (a confederacy of dunces) do it by describing extreme (abnormal) situations to the point they're ridiculus. This guy was just describing shitty situations, and unethical behaviours and excusing himself by saying, "oh it's the system that made me be like this to survive the year", which is... a choice.

I read the book because I found it in a twitter o reddit thread that spoke about it being incredible and capturing the feeling of being an intern o resident. It was a bad choice, and a waste of time.

It was genuinely hard to determine whether I liked or hated this book. The abbreviations and acronyms made me laugh out loud and there were many parts that were honest and real, but overall it was just so crass and not the most 2020 book

This book is still an enigma to me. It’s a reflection of medicine in the 1970s, with echoes that ring true to me today, though thankfully only echoes. Yet that’s all buried in its gallows humor, its medicine sexualized to the point of erotica, its blatant dehumanization of patients, doctors, and anyone else touched by the medical system.

This book is frankly offensive to many who read it. I laughed a lot. I cringed a lot. I’ve been told both to read it and to never near it with a ten-foot pole. I find myself in the same position: should I recommend it or not?

I am about to graduate and become one of the overworked interns that fill this book. I see the humor and the truth here, but does that mean I have already lost some human portion of myself, or have I retained it? I don’t know yet, but perhaps the best advice here is not about the novel at all, but found in the author’s afterword in my edition: Stay connected. Speak up. Learn empathy. Learn your trade, in the world.

Satirisch schrijfsel over een groep 'medical interns' in een groot Amerikaans ziekenhuis. Enigszins gedateerd maar bevat toch enkele rake en herkenbare observaties. Geen topper vanwege de matig boeiende personages en de eentonige schrijfstijl. 3 sterretjes.

I was pitched on this as being something like Catch-22, but about medicine instead of war. This made me dubious because (1) I don't know that I think Catch-22 is exactly about war and (2) comparing anything to Catch-22 is going to make me dubious on general principles.

Still, this was really worth my time. It was funny and sad and touching and interesting, and the fact that a lot of doctors seem to say that it conveys a real feeling of what internship is like is *crazy*. I don't think it'll become a book I reread every few years like Catch-22, but it was terrific.

Reir, llorar, vomitar y temer el momento de tener que ir a un hospital.

On the one hand, I can appreciate what this book did to expose the dark sides of internship and residency and the hell that future doctors are put through in the name of "medical training." I think it alerted many in the general public to the way that medical training pushed future doctors to their limits, frequently resulting in damage to their compassion, empathy, and mental health. This book was the canary in the coal mine for many both within and without the medical system. Although it took years for changes (such as limiting the working hours of residency to an average of 80 hr/week) to come, this book likely had a part in getting people to realize that changes were necessary. Even now, 40 years later, much of this book still rings true. The rate of burnout and suicide in interns and residents remains depressingly high, and too many trainees still experience the pressure to "do everything," even when that might not be in the patient's best interest. As long as doctors continue to feel that this book accurately represents their experience, there is still progress that remains to be made.
All that being said, I was not fond of the main character and would not want him to be my doctor. I also feel that there are aspects of this book that seem to belong more to a TV dramatization of medical training than to an actual residency. I understand that this book was written in the era of Watergate and "things were different." I understand that this is a fictionalized account. I also understand that the character is sarcastic and burned out and that's part of the point. But boy howdy. The sheer numbers of times that Roy shows up drunk to a shift, or drinks while on duty, or has sex while on duty, and so forth and so on. It's a lot.
So, I appreciate this book's contribution to improving medical residencies, but I have no plans to read it again.

this one is a little tricky for me. as a person who is surrounded by medicine, this story rang very true to the things that i have seen and felt about this culture. i enjoyed the gritty, unglorified nature of this story and fully recognize that, in the 70s especially, this story needed to be told.

however, while i felt the depictions of medicine felt very real and true, i really struggled with the portrayal of basically all of the female characters. they were almost all either hypersexualized or described as frigid.

the one female physician within the book is constantly criticized for making medicine into the only thing she has in her life, while there is no acknowledgement of the difficulties of being a female physician in the 70s. is it possible the reason she can't "do nothing" like her colleague, the fat man, suggests is because she has had to work twice as hard as her male counterparts to get to where is? i wanted to see more of her than just the frigid, control freak that roy perceives her as.

roy's partner, berry, is a clinical psychologist who's only function within the story is to be cheated on and then used as roy's own personal therapist.

all the nurses and orderlies are only ever used for sex from the male physicians.

and thats about all of the female characters. this book was definitely of its time, as evidenced by the depiction of the female characters or that a character is simple named "the fat man" and while i enjoyed the medical aspects of the book, there was definitely some room for improvement

DNF @ 11%

John Updike, in the introduction, compares THE HOUSE OF GOD to CATCH-22. I can see why he makes this connection, but there is a staggering difference between these two books. CATCH-22 is hilarious. This book is merely outrageous.

I'm reading this after training, during my first year as an attending. Many lessons I've already learned bit the afterword touched me the most. Isolation is truly debilitating and that is the most lasting lesson from this book.

Los médicos, esos mortales que endiosamos y a quienes confiamos nuestras vidas. Revestidos de un halo de grandeza, obviamos su humanidad y las miserias propias de su profesión. Samuel Shem nos la cuenta sin tapujos, y la Casa de Dios es el escenario: los miedos, las inseguridades, las burlas, los apodos puestos a sus pacientes, la frustración ante la muerte y ante la limitada medicina, la desesperanza, el estrés, y por supuesto, el sexo dentro del trabajo como escape al trabajo mismo. De los numerosos personajes que pueblan sus páginas solo uno es realmente memorable, el Gordo. Es el cinismo personificado y también el alma de la historia, su mayor atractivo. No es casualidad que el ritmo decaiga cuando disminuyen sus apariciones. Su crueldad es realmente pragmatismo y sensibilidad frente a la realidad de los Gomers. Es el mentor de los médicos de la Casa de Dios, inicialmente repudiado y finalmente idolatrado, porque dice lo que todos callan y expone sin reservas las restricciones y vicios de la medicina. No se puede perder de vista que la historia da cuenta de una época y un contexto específico, Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, lo esencial se mantiene, la disección de una figura escasamente profundizada en el universo literario