Dit boek werd me meermaals aangeraden door artsen, omdat dit ‘hilarisch’ is en goed omschrijft hoe het leven als assistent is, kortom een echte ‘cult/klassieker’ vanuit de jaren 70, ‘leuk om te lezen als ‘dokter in spé’’

Ik persoonlijk vind dit boek walgelijk: vrouwen worden enkel bekeken als domme, naiëve, lust-objecten.
Ook vind ik het zeer repetitief: er wordt telkens opnieuw gelachen met minderheidsgroepen.

Helaas zegt dit ook veel over de personen die me dit aanraden (wonderbaarlijk allemaal van het mannelijke geslacht)/hoe de medische wereld vandaag nog steeds in elkaar zit.

Too much excess material. The parts about the hospital mostly were good. The interludes in the interns' (plural) loves lives and oddities were too much. I know it was popular but note my cup of tea.

I quit about page 153 out of 400. Too many good books waiting to wast time of this.

Not sure how to rate it!!!

LOL one of the few DNF reviews for me here! I got through about 40 pages before I realized this book was Not For Me. I'm already pretty skeptical about reading books about med, they feel a little too close to homework for me than anything else, but I got a promising review from a friend that this book was one of the few he actually enjoyed and felt was realistic so I was like ok why not! Unfortunately, the writing style is too crass and striaght up like....depressing for me. I know when you get to residency you're so burnt out that you actually do start to hate the patients a little bit, but like woah were gonna start OUT with that??? Idk, if I'm gonna read a book about med, it either better be funny as hell or at least reflective. Like okkkkk we get it you HAAAATE old people!! Also all the weirdo gratuitous descriptions of sex......that's a BOOOOO from me. No one in the hospital is checking out nurses as like prizes to fuck, just straight up gross, man.

A book devoid of any real emotion that goes out of its way to play into the author's image of himself. This book does a disservice to what emotional reckoning looks like. It has moments of truth about the modern medical system but that can't make up for a rotten core. I wish this wasn't considered a classic of medicine because it glorifies toxic masculinity, cynicism and a culture of emotional suppression. Being snarky and critical does not a good book make.

The House of God by Samuel Shem is a tour de force that lays bare the brutal realities of medical training with equal parts humor, heartbreak, and biting satire. This is not just a novel; it’s a mirror reflecting the emotional and ethical struggles that come with practicing medicine.

Through the eyes of Dr. Roy Basch, we’re taken into the trenches of an internship year, a world filled with eccentric mentors, absurd bureaucracy, and the relentless grind of patient care. Shem masterfully captures the tension between idealism and disillusionment, showing how the weight of the system can shape, and often break, the human spirit.

What sets this book apart is its unflinching honesty. The “rules” of the House of God, like “The patient is the one with the disease,” are both disturbingly cynical and profoundly true. Yet, amidst the dark humor and chaos, there is a beating heart of compassion, a call to remember the humanity in medicine.

As a psychiatrist, I found its exploration of burnout, detachment, and the coping mechanisms of young doctors especially resonant. It’s a must-read not only for medical professionals but for anyone who wants to understand the emotional toll of caregiving.

Shem’s writing is sharp, insightful, and unforgettable. The House of God is as relevant today as it was when it was first published—a true classic that will leave you laughing, crying, and thinking long after you’ve turned the last page.

A true example that being a classic doesn’t make a book easy to read nor the characters likeable.

I fought through the rambling writing style and chocked on the hyper-masculine vibes of superiority that this book is drenched with.

House of God may be the most exclusionary book I’ve ever read. With every attempt to identify and connect with the plot and characters, I found myself repulsed and felt like my seat was in the back row rather than in the character’s heads, which did absolutely nothing for my enjoyment of this book.

Maybe that’s the point of the book and I just didn’t get it

I don't usually review books I rate at 3 stars or lower, but this is an exception: I detest this book so much that I feel compelled to write something about it.

Make no mistake: I am a resident physician (and read this book during my internship year), so none of the horrible things that happen in the book faze me. I am also the last person to dislike a book because it is not "feel-good", or because it offers more questions than solutions (those are often the best books). However, I take issue with this book because, to me, it doesn't deliver what it promises. "The Classic Novel of Life and Death in an American Hospital:" for me, the only word true in that subtitle is "Novel."

The main character, a thin guise for the author himself, goes through internship. He is overworked, he is bitter, and he has sexy escapades with nurses and social workers while his fiance psychoanalyzes him. Okay, been there done that (minus the sexy escapades and fiance part). Let's see: then he rants against the evil of the medical training system and the futility of the medical care he delivers. Fine, now that the obvious stuff is out of the way, let's cut to the chase. Oh wait, now it's over.

But where are the other things? Where's the guilt, not just over how you think you mishandled a patient's care, but also over how you've not lived up to what others and what yourself expected of you and how you've neglected all friends and family? What about the oppressive sense of responsibility which you are initially overwhelmed with, frequently take for granted, sometimes make light of, often resent, and occasionally try to dodge? What about inevitable dehumanization that is not so much created by a villanous, uncaring system but is really a part of the job description? What about your transferences and countertransferences towards patients, your natural defense systems and how they sabotage your clinical judgement, making you even more guilty and defensive, your feeling of inadequacy that is only outweighed by your desire to be somehow normal again and part of the rest of humanity? These are things my colleagues and I deal with on a daily basis. This so-called "classic" doesn't address any of them except in the most perfunctory manner possible.

What it does do is rage against the residency system of his time. There have been immense changes since then; some may say the pendulum has even swung too much the other way. I cannot find much beyond that. The book is of historical interest in that regard, but given the depth of the emotional toil that is internship, I expected a lot, lot more out of the "classic novel".

It also doesn't help that the central character acts like a sociopath, and I don't think you can blame that solely on the system.

Apie šitą knyga būtų galima rašyti ir kalbėti daug: pradėti nuo to, kokios yra medicinos realijos lyginant su mūsų visų susidarytomis iliuzijomis, maitinamomis visokių grej anatomijų ir daktarų hausų ir baigti daktarų persidirbimais ir psichozėmis. Bet nieko panašaus daryti aš nenoriu. Nenoriu ne todėl, kad ši knyga būtų bloga, priešingai – nepaisant astronominio kiekio cinizmo, abejingumo ir paniekos, kurios visam pasauliui kupini šios knygos herojai, knyga tikrai nebloga bent jau tuo, kad priverčia susimąstyti ir pagalvoti apie žmonės, kurie diena po dienos, valanda po valandos kapstosi augliuose, pūliuose ir kraujyje ir kaip tai turėtų juos veikti psichologiškai, kurie yra mūsų laikų dievai, lemiantys kas gyvens, o kas mirs, ne todėl, kad neturėčiau minčių, bet todėl, kad po šitos knygos apėmęs jausmas yra toks, kaip įkišus rankas į puvėsių ir gleivių kupiną kupstą – pasąmoningai supranti, kad nieko baisaus ir kad tai tik paprasta organika, bet labiausiai vis tiek norisi tik daug kartų nusiplauti rankas muilu ir daugiau prie tos nekaltos organikos nebesiliesti. Ir tai yra tikrasis šios knygos veidas. Viena vertus ji sukrečianti, kita vertus perskaičius norisi tiesiog pamiršti ir daugiau apie ją nebegalvoti, nes kitaip net ir gražiausia diena tampa ne tokia gražia. Į daktarus daugiau niekada nebežiūrėsiu kaip į „tiesiog profesiją“, kaip ir visiškai nebestebina, kad būtent daktarai ir teisininkai laikomi dažniausiai prasigeriančiomis profesijomis. Einu paskaityt kokį sacharoze ir lengva erotika persmelktą romantinį niekaliuką šiokiam tokiam atsigavimui.

Nenuostabu, kad gydytojai taip iš tolo stebi skaudžiausias žmonių dramas. Tragedija ne ta, kad jie abejingi, o ta, kad jiems stinga jausmų gilumo.Dauguma žmonių gyvai reaguoja į savo kasdienį darbą, bet tik ne gydytojai. Neįtikėtinas paradoksas: daktaro specialybė neapsakomai nužmogina, bet kartu ją didžiai vertina visuomenė.

This was a cult book in its time in the 1970’s amongst medical health professionals and in many ways it would have been brutally shocking. The truth about how patients and medical staff were treated, the sexualised nature and expectations of nurses, the dehumanising of new medical residents, the dark twisted black humour people used as a coping technique. It is all there and at the time there would have been no other book like it. Talking amongst my hospital colleagues all of the doctors from whatever Country of origin had all read it and used it almost as a second medical text. It follows the story of Roy, a golden head boy who has excelled academically his whole life and is the pride and joy of his family – particularly his dentist father who always dreamt of medical school himself. Roy starts his first year Residency at the ‘House of God’ a prestigious Jewish hospital – where people still remember the Holocaust, had friends and family impacted by it and the hospital almost represents the clawing back of the Jewish community to prestige, wealth and status. Roy walks in anticipating being a hero and a saviour and is confronted by a community of old people who smell and are dying and are demanding. He finds the hospital consultants distant, cold, callous and money making and discovers that the work is terrifying, confronting and of inhumane where the medicine they practice does more harm than good. In an effort to cope they adopt a coded language to identify the old people GOMER:_ Get Out of My Emergency Room. They engage in risk taking behaviours, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity. Each of the residents suffer an existential crisis in the first year and some literally don’t survive. It was an interesting book, a little dated now though I can see some of the same issues still happening in our hospitals today. Funny, dark and confronting it still holds relevance to medicine today.

The House of God was an enjoyable read for me, in that it was engaging. The plot grabbed you and there were a lot of funny moments. That being said, this book really shows that it is from an age where medicine was only practiced by white men. Every single woman in the book was either a sex object to be used or highly annoying. The one black doctor was a quintessential stereotype. The book also proffers an incredibly cynical view of medicine; everyone is overworked, burned out, and is trying to just get patients out of their ward instead of actually treating them. I understand this book was written as a satire, and the end was resolved relatively well, but it went too far in too many places for me. A classic of late 20th-century medicine, but I wouldn't recommend.

Wildly Overrated Cesspool of a Book

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but I have many friends who are, and I've heard all about their internships and residencies. None of them purposely killed patients, cheated on husbands/wives/girlfriends/boyfriends, or did the other disgusting things that the author would like us to believe are commonplace.

It's frankly hard to find anything positive about this book. The writing is adolescent and poor, filled with bathroom humor and gratuitous sex. Virtually every character is a horrible person, treating patients like meat and/or killing them, cheating on spouses, etc.

The book is apparently semi-autobiographical. In the author's afterword, he describes himself as an aging 60's radical who backed into medicine as a way to avoid the Vietnam draft and skipped classes to go protest (he states that he still does not know anything about the Kidney, because he was too busy protesting to learn it). It sounds like he was a very poor med student and doctor who went to a very poor hospital, and then wrote this horrible book to describe his experiences. Based on this book, I would certainly not, under any circumstances, allow him to treat anyone I care about, and I would certainly discourage anyone from wasting his or her time reading this piece of trash.