Over the years, I've been told many times by many different people that I should read The House of God. These recommendations usually come with some variation on an explanation that the book is a thought provoking insight into the delivery of healthcare and/or medical education. I envisioned delving into an Atul Gawande-esque, cerebral discussion of the virtues and limitations of modern medicine. Instead, I found myself stifling gut wrenching laughter as I - initially - enjoyed this "fictionalized" memoir of a first year resident in the 1970s. This, while in the middle seat on a transatlantic flight, must have left the people next to me thinking they were stuck next to a madwoman for eight hours.

I thoroughly enjoyed the beginning of the novel, cherishing (and identifying with) the interns' horrors at their introduction to hospital wards and the stereotypes of their patients and the care they receive. The descriptions of the emotions that an overburdened, under supported intern can feel are things I can imagine or have experienced in some way. These depictions were raw and utterly honest. For that, I would recommend this book to any medical student or resident.

This exploration of the trials and challenges of medical training becomes consuming - to the protagonist and to the reader. I take most of the later part of the book with "a grain of salt" - recognizing this novel as the catharsis of a disillusioned resident who - notably - abandons his career path, takes time off of residency training, and ultimately returns to specialize in psychiatry.

For the gratuitous and extreme male chauvinism illustrated in The House of God, I find the book nearly unreadable. The protagonist's treatment of women is repugnant and offensive. His interactions with female colleagues and hospital staff constitute sexual harassment by any definition. Furthermore, the depiction of the protagonist's relationship with his girlfriend reads like an adulterers' fantasy of a self-sacrificing, subordinate female partner, which I find difficult to read. Ok, ok ... the book was written in the '70s and should be examined within its historical context, you say. In response, I'll point you to the author's afterword, written 25 years after the book was published. Nearly hidden in the author's self-congratulatory remarks are a few reflections on changes in medicine since the book's debut. He mentions that, "Another great advance is the status of women - now at least fifty percent of medical school students (in 1973 they were ten percent). As carriers of caring in our culture, women bring these qualities to the care of patients and relationships with peers," then quickly skips to applaud adoption of meditation and acupuncture as other great advances in the field. Hardly enough for me to come close to seeing past the frat-boy-like detailing of the protagonist's sexual exploits and abuse of nurses, social workers, and the solitary female resident so unflatteringly depicted in the novel.

Oh my goodness, this was so good, and so painful! Funny and endearing enough to make up for all the horrible, and there is a lot of horrible. This is very true to modern medicine as I have experienced it. People constantly tell me that 'it's different now.' Sadly, not enough has changed, and what has changed hasn't changed enough. Regardless this is an incredible and a marvelous read. It breaks up well enough for reading on the bus, although at over 400 pages it is a little long for that. I would certainly recommend this to anyone with any interest in medicine, whether as a provider or as a customer.

First of all, let me say that i have never heard of this book. However, i won the sequel through a giveaway on goodreads in exchange for an honest review. Anyone who knows me knows that i must start from the beginning of a series! So i checked this book out from my local library and read it so I could read its sequel.

Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that i wanted to make sure i didn’t miss out on any pertinent information that would be needed to understand or interpret parts of book 2, i would have stopped reading.

It was pretty boring. Also very strange wording. I don’t really know what to say to describe it.

Skipped through it about half way through, sue me. Too many chapters in a row with no meaningful progress for the protagonists for me. Still, as a healthcare professional, there's some twisted truths to be found and the over the top 70-80s style, while overplayed and predicable, was fun for a while.

Cuando me licencié en Medicina, allá por 2015, se llevaba leer este libro antes de comenzar la residencia para poder experimentar la experiencia novelizada de otro médico junior durante su etapa de residente, la decadencia que conlleva la enfermedad, la experiencia con la vida y la muerte blabla.
Me pareció un puñetero coñazo, en serio. Lo abandoné después del primer tercio porque todo era súper absurdo, melodramático e irreal. El protagonista es bastante despreciable y no conseguí empatizar con él por mucho que tuviéramos en común (joven, ingenuo, comenzando la residencia…). La ambientación es bastante decadente y, hasta donde yo llegué, no hubo ningún aspecto positivo que mereciese la pena en la vida que llevaba el joven médico (no, tampoco las infidelidades con las enfermeras con cofia en los recovecos del hospital. Por favor…

4.5 stars. An important medical piece of fiction especially for those in the industry—caring for patients is vitally important and also extremely emotionally demanding. The book highlights the brutal, sometimes hilarious, often incomprehensible reality of medicine. Well written, with the appropriate level of humor to allow the reader to power through the more tragic sections. 50 years removed from the events and still applicable today. The afterword was extremely well done and ties the book together perfectly

If you read between the lines, there are many fantastic lessons to take away from this book. However, the more I read the more I realized why only male physicians had ever recommended this book to me

Un libro que pasa de la comedia y del humor picante en el entorno de un hospital a plantear temas como la salud mental, la vocación y el sentido de la vida en la vida médica.

El desarrollo del libro es como ver una serie en la que cada capítulo es un cúmulo de situaciones esperpénticas que rozan lo absurdo pero con un hilo de fondo que culmina de manera más profunda de lo que podría parecer.

Constituye una parodia muy original donde cada situación y cada personaje es más peculiar y absurdo que el anterior.

Deja clara la importancia de cuidarse a uno mismo para poder cuidar a los demás y dar sentido al día a día en el trabajo para poder ser feliz.

I was told I needed to read this book as someone going into medicine. That it was a "medical school classic". I will say that it was a classic. It definitely read like it was written in the 1970s. The only part of the book I remotely liked was the reality of how hard intern year is and how much of it is removed from what's taught in medical schools. I liked the sarcastic narrative of medical hierarchies and prestige. And that's about it.

I found the main character to be atrocious. He was bordering on performing malpractice medicine (in fact the whole hospital was) and his growth was not realistic or believable. He was entirely dependent on the women around him and was generally unlikeable, despite being the MVI on the floor.

I particularly hate how women were portrayed in this book. The narrator sexualized every feminine body in this book, from nurses to his partner to his patients, again crossing boundaries in terms of professionalism and possibly sexual assault and abuse. He would claim these female patients enjoyed his exams or were checking him out too, but that is no excuse to abusing his power. The only non-sexual feminine character was the only other female resident (surprise surprise) because only lonely, ugly women can become doctors.

I think this book has an important message about physician burnout and can talk to how badly residents are treated, however, I found this book bordering on unreadable for the sexist and racist undertones. Frankly, I think we need a 21st-century rewrite.

Take Catch-22, replace Captain Yossarian with Dr Basch, change the backdrop from Pianosa to the hellish “House of God,” a hospital in the US, and presto, you have the House of God in a nutshell.

It’s almost as fun to read as Catch-22, it’s just as sardonic and dark, with moments that do really have you laughing in real life. For instance, the fact that Basch and his team of fellow interns outperforms everyone else in the hospital, when in reality, they don’t actually treat their patients medically, is absolutely hilarious. This approach comes from Basch’s guiding light in the darkness of the all consuming hospital; his resident, the Fat Man. He dispenses a series of laws throughout the book, and the one that best exemplifies his approach to medicine, and the approach that the new interns take up, is “the delivery of good medical care is to do as much nothing as possible."

Some of the other laws are as sardonic as you’d expect, like “if you don’t take a temperature, you won’t find a fever” and “at a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse.”

Funnily enough, it looks like the House of God might have some influence on the medical lexicon. For instance, words like turfing, bouncing and gomers all have worked their way into medical lingo. Interestingly, the famous Zebra rule seems to have come from this book. As the Fat Man proclaims, “if you hear hoof-beats, think horses, not zebras”, which basically means that its less likely that a patient has an insanely rare disease, and more likely that it is a common disease presenting with odd symptoms.

However, the book does quite a good job of conveying the harsh reality of being a medical intern in the 70s, with austere working conditions, and barely any time to sleep or have a life outside the hospital. Basch struggles with this throughout the book, overcoming a lot of these struggles along the way, and accepting that some remain as challenges he has yet to deal with.

The House of God is really a fantastic book in multiple regards; it has enough dark humour in it to make Joseph Heller proud and does a great job of explaining the experience of a medical intern in the 70s. I would highly recommend it.

Truly hilarious in a “I’m not sure I should be laughing at this” kind of way, this is a medical classic that I’m sure is enhanced by my having just gone through intern year.

Although hilarious as it points out the absurdities of being an intern in our current healthcare system, this book also drives home some of the unexplainable darker aspects of residency and medicine in general. There is a darkness to dealing with death so frequently and a necessity to cope somehow. Shem expertly dives into the deepest pits of this darkness while keeping it palatable through humor.

I would recommend this to any doctor, though perhaps not during their intern year. I would also recommend it to significant others and family members of people entering into residency — I could be instructive on what they are going through. They may not get a lot of the jokes, though.

Fantastic! A must read for medical students/residents/doctors everywhere. I can only imagine how meaningful this was to readers when it was first published and the culture of medical education was so different.