This was my second attempt at reading this book. My first, when I was still a medical student, ended a few chapters in, when I had to stop reading because I found the book far too cynical and depressing. Now, apparently, I'm jaded enough to enjoy it, though I know the reality isn't quite as awful as this book would have you believe.

Plenty of it, of course, hits right on target. The exhaustion of night shifts: that moment when you actually wish somebody would die because it means less work for you... it happens. The sense of losing touch with the outside world, of being unable to connect with anybody who hasn't lived your experience: that happens too, though not to quite such a dramatic extent as described in this book. It certainly can be hard to expalin that experience to someone who hasn't lived it. The isolation and uncertainty that comes after one error, and the lack of support or counselling by senior staff - now that can be all too common, and the story of the unfortunate Potts is a frightening example of just where that can lead.

I think one of my favourite reflection-of-reality moments was the way Roy seemed to feel, over and over again, that each new rotation was better than the last - excited with the change he'd think he had finally found a way to be human in medicine, before the inevitable disillusionment.

On the other hand, a lot of what occurs in this book simply wouldn't happen in the real world, or at least it wouldn't in a 2013 hospital in Australia. I'm not too sure if the differences are because the story takes place in the 1970s, or because it's the US, or a bit of both. For example, ordering invasive investigations that clearly aren't indicated just so the hospital makes money... doesn't happen here, though unnecessary investigations do get ordered for various other reasons. Also, interns being left alone to run the hospital - that doesn't happen either, of shouldn't anyway. Interns answer to registrars and registrars answer to consultants, and ultimately if something goes wrong, it's the consultant who'll have to explain it.

Anyway, I think this book is still a worthwhile read for anybody starting out in medicine - if only as a chance to reflect and appreciate how and why the way we practice medicine has changed. It's also, of course, darkly hilarious, and remains the source of many a medical in-joke (what's the first thing you should do at a cardiac arrest? Take your own pulse...)

Een twijfel tussen 2 en 3 sterren. Veel humor en veel waarheden in dit boek. Cynisch verhaal over hiërarchie binnen het ziekenhuis, maar ook extreem overdreven. Vermakelijk maar wel een beetje veel van hetzelfde!

I think that it’s a sad commentary on the state of medical education and the infamous intern year that a satirical novel from 1978 is still extremely relatable to medical students and freshly minted residents in North America. The crux of the story focuses on how the absolutely gruelling and downright abusive medical hierarchy chips away at students until they’re forced to just accept it and in turn perpetuate the same abuses to those below them. And it’s honestly sad that this is still how residency programs operate (though I will admit that things have gotten significantly better from 1978 in the resident wellness department).

I really enjoyed the morals of this novel and I think that a lot of The Fat Man’s teachings are still relevant to young doctors. I particularly love rule 3: at a cardiac arrest, take your own pulse first and I feel like it’s one I’ll just keep in the back of my head.

That being said, this is a medical novel from 1978 and there are a lot of parts of this book that are problematic and didn’t age the greatest to say the least. Also there’s a lot of sex scenes that literally did nothing for the plot that I just skimmed over. Like there’s a lot of sex side plots that are completely unnecessary imo.

In summary - there’s a reason this book is still read by medical professionals and it’s used as a basis for so many tropes in medical fiction and medical based media. A lot of the morals still hold completely true in 2022 and are ones I’ll be thinking about for a while.

Really could’ve done without the parts that aged poorly though. And all of the sex scenes.

3.5 stethoscopes out of 5

DNF’d - this book was just making me depressed and burning me out without even having started residency

Hoewel The House of God ontbeerlijke waarheden bevat over het leven van stagairs, is de schrijfstijl van Shem te buitengewoon vulgair en randpsychotisch naar mijn smaak (en dat al voor een psychiater).

There's not much to say about House of God that hasn't already been said. It's hilarious and appalling, often simultaneously. The characters and situations are uniformly ridiculous and at the same time believable. In all, I enjoyed the book for what it is, a satirical commentary on 20th century American medical training. From my novice career in medicine, some elements ring true, and some seem to be (and I hope are) more farcical.
Ultimately, I empathized with the book's portrayal of the brutalization and dehumanization of the interns, but what I could not come to terms with was the protagonist, Roy Basch, being an incorrigible bastard at baseline. Arrogant, misogynistic, and irresponsible; I could not relate to half of his actions and couldn't come to blame the system for bringing him to do those things (specifically, cheating on his girlfriend with multiple female hospital staff members and becoming intoxicated before and during work). Clearly he's not meant to be an entirely sympathetic character, but because he was awful from the outset, his transformation into a completely callous drone was not as impactful. In all the references to House of God that I've read, nobody seems to mention how terrible Roy is, and it bothered me constantly, especially given that he is ostensibly based on the author.
In summary, a hilarious satire with a deplorable protagonist, and essential reading for any would-be physician needing to learn to laugh at the absurdity of the system (that's all of us).

I read this during the first weeks of residency and couldn't have picked a better time to do so. What an excellent depiction of all that medical training is but shouldn't be.
Few thoughts:
1) Some of my Family Med colleagues thought House of God was abhorrent. I thought long and hard about this--and even about why it wasn't shocking to me. Here's the rub: it's satire y'all! All I can say is that if the anecdotes make you so uncomfortable, commit yourself to improving health care and medical education. We've come along way since the 1960s, but there's still a long way to go.
2) I liked House of God so much, I wanted to recommend it to my favorite fellow readers. But, I can't imagine that it would be fully understood by non-medical people. There are a few realistic and/or cynical few of you, however, that I think would really appreciate and enjoy it! (So if you're interested, we can always discuss afterwards.)
3) Lastly, the elephant in the room: my only real gripe about House of God is the excessive sexual situations. They just felt disproportionately over-the-top. Perhaps this is a reflection of the audience it was initially written for: primarily males, in the free-loving 1960s. Everything else in the novel had modern-day applicability, but the on-call threesomes, etc. must be less prevelent in the current era of "professionalism".

I read this book bc the medical community refers to it so often, and it’s supposed to be a “staple piece” before you start residency. I could not disagree more. Yes, there were themes that were relatable, and some heartbreaking truths about medicine. However the perverse way women, esp nurses, are objectified in this was disgusting. It highlighted a lot of topics that are important to talk about in the medical community such as burnout, depression, provider suicide, and disconnection from your patients. But I couldn’t get past the narrative they painted that MALE physicians were untouchable in society, free to be unfaithful to their partners, and to never be reproached. Outdated, perverse, and underwhelming, plz skip this book.

I've avoided reading this for years. To be fair, I didn't even know about it until half way through med school and then I never had much desire to come home and 'read about the day job'. But, now I'm a GP and have been out of the hospital for approaching 2 years now I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Hmmm. It's about what I was expecting. Almost everyone who has reviewed it on here appears to be a doctor and the number of 'just like real life' comments astound me. I trained in the UK and work in NZ so I don't have any first hand knowledge of what it's like to work in the States but damn. I hope this is extremely dated compared to modern practice but it seems people still feel this is accurate. Really? Medicine really is a different kettle of fish in America in that case.

There are flashes of familiarity and a few incidents and feelings have a ring of truth (with a few things I suspect only doctors could really fully appreciate). But the sheer unpleasantness, disgust and lack of humanity is disturbing.

In all honesty, my first house year was probably one of the best of my life. Fun, busy, new, a great group of close knit friends; dancing, sex and drinking definitely played a role, plus there were long nights, weekend shifts and some stressful on calls. But there was none of the negativity portrayed here. Yeah, you deal with crap at times (literally and figuratively) but I just cannot relate to the majority of the feelings in the book. I really enjoyed my elderly care and old age psychiatric rotations and love working with older patients (one of the joys of life as a GP). There were no major train-wrecks in our first year (though I have seen the toll on other doctors over the years).

I think it's an ever lasting theme amongst the medical profession. 'You guys have it so much easier than I did when I was a junior'. I've heard that countless times, I've said it myself and I've heard older doctors tell me their mentors said exactly the same to them. By this standard, modern medicine should be a breeze. We still worked long hours and calls, still had to work hard with limited support and make tough decisions. I don't think many of us went in with our eyes so shut though. We were all fairly aware what life as a junior doctor would be.

The reviews comparing this to Catch 22 seem a little lazy. Perhaps as a historical (hopefully) depiction of the horrors of the American Health Care System it has some merits, but otherwise it just leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. Now I've read it I can put it aside but I'm not sure I'd recommend it and I would truly be concerned about med students reading this for tips.

Samuel Shem is the pen name for the author of this book. After reading a few lines of the lascivious tales within, it becomes obvious why a pseudonym was used. “The House of God” details the journey of Roy Bausch and 5 interns at one of the most prestigious teaching hospitals in the world. Contents are plenary, raw and tragic.

“ ...Get the job done, and since we're all in the ninety-ninth percentile of interns, at one of the best internships in the world, what you do turns out to be a terrific job—a superlative job. Don't forget that four out of every ten interns in America can't speak English.”
---Dr. Samuel Bergman, MD

A Senior Resident, called “The Fat Man” is the kind of genius who swears like a sailor and gets away with it because he is just “that good.” Rife with black humor and a candid delineation of what enduring an internship is really like. In a quotidian terror of learning by doing, we discover how “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit” becomes a mantra.

Imagine at Beth Abraham Hospital nurses (akin to divine buxom cherubs) named: Molly, Angel and Hazel succor in ways that de-facto/de-jure rules do not seem to apply. “Buffing the chart,” inspires smiles like dollars coming from outcomes you would not wish on an enemy. Must read for any resident, intern or student of medicine! Buy, laugh and and most of all learn.

I read most of this book in parallel over the course of my 8-week internal medicine rotation (which was also the first clinical rotation of my third year of medical school). Funny and fitting that I happened to finish both on the same day (today). Over my 8-weeks, I got to meet my fair share of Gomers and Gomeres, LOL in NADs, BMSs (my fellow heels), and what I would presume to be the occasional slurper. The book is remarkably relatable, which is ironic for a book (in the setting of the ever-advancing medical field) written 50 years ago. This is a dumb and obvious take since all books are relatable because books are, of course, written by people about people's experiences and read by people (duh). However, the experience of a physician in training is a unique one, and it's quite the joy (and horror) to read something from 50 years prior only to see it come to life verbatim the very next day on the wards. We hurt people in medicine, and we hurt ourselves. It's inevitable in this profession, I suppose. With regards to the sexual escapades of our hero, Dr. Roy Basch MD., I enjoyed them (90% for the satire and 10% for the smut). Some people hate it, and I understand. However, the author was indeed a psychiatrist of the psychoanalytical variety, I believe, so I don't think it's a coincidence that sex holds a lot of space in the mind palace of Dr. Basch. If I were more intelligent, I would talk about how it's all just metaphors for the Libido, the Death Drive, mommy and daddy issues, etc., but that would be too much for this amateur reader.

The House of God... I highly recommend it.

Vulgari, tiesmuka, parodanti gyvenimo realybę. Atskleidžia medicinos darbuotojų gyvenimo kasdienybę, įtampą, sunkumus, su kuriais jie susiduria kiekvieną dieną, o pagalbos iš šalies dažnai nesulaukia. Juk užtenka vien atsidurti ligoninės priimamajame, kad pamatytume, kaip pacientai ar jų artimieji elgiasi su gydytojais.
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Knyga tikrai verta dėmesio, suteikianti galimybę apmąstyti savo gyvenimą.