Reviews for Intern: A Doctor's Initiation

The average rating for Intern: A Doctor's Initiation based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-06-22 00:00:00 Natalie Walnycky Dr. Jauhar seems like a pretty narcissistic douche. His personal career struggles, the difficulty he has in deciding what profession to pursue, and his moderate depression and ennui in the midst of stressful situations are, he will be surprised to hear, much less interesting than the anecdotes of the hospital patients under his care. His and his brother's (also a physician) douchiness are not unexpected given their parents' attitudes: get out of academia, where you will never be successful but will languish as an underpaid post-doc for decades (Jauhar got a PhD in physics before going into medicine); go into medicine, which will bring prestige upon you and us, and then go into cardiology, which will bestow greater prestige and wealth than internal medicine. Jauhar admits going into cardiology for these reasons, so points for being honest, I guess. Nor does the medical profession as a whole come off well here. The message seems to be: if any crumb of kindness, understanding, or compassion gets dropped your way from a doctor, treasure it, for they are few and far between. There's a weird, casual misogyny in the book, odd for someone only in his forties. Rachel is "a knockout blonde." Nancy is "a good-looking blonde." A nurse is stocky, with "a broad Filipino mug and a mop of ink black hair" and stale breath. Caitlin, "a very attractive brunette," "had great breasts." As she explained to him the ins and outs of his oncology fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. Does Caitlin like being referred to in this manner? After all, she must know by now. There aren't that many doctors who could have explained Dr. Jauhar's fellowship to him in the Sloan-Kettering cafeteria that day. Or perhaps she was a composite of all the other great-breasted women doctors at Sloan-Kettering. Dr. Jauhar writes about all these knockout blonds and great breasts right on the eve of getting engaged to his girlfriend Sonia. Dr. Jauhar is concerned about marrying Sonia, because Sonia too is a doctor, and he worries about a two-doctor marriage. But he finds comfort in a study that found that "women in dual-doctor marriages spent more time rearing children, more often arranged their work schedules to fulfill family responsibilities, worked fewer hours, and earned less money." Three stars for the medical stories, one star for the douchiness.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-04 00:00:00 Joshua Moreira "Intern: A Doctor's Initiation" is at times shouting in your face with brutal "hot pink" honesty bringing back memories of me and my brother accidentally seeing a cadaver at Rio Hondo Hospital. This memory was similar to what made Dr. Jauhar vomit in-between patients. "Cookbook medicine" is the generic term he applies to the medical practice and not something he wishes to emulate. "Creare fabulis" and drones mimic. "One thing I never thought seriously about was becoming a doctor. In fact, for most of my life, medicine was the last thing I wanted to do...Welcome, Doctor. Will you have a drink?" ---Sandeep Jauhar, MD Given the suffering, we can deduce this doctor needs to be under a doctor's care. During his internship Sandeep wobbles between being a depressed ascetic and an agnostic living in a hyperhidrotic world burdened with self-guilt. "When you didn't know what you were doing...anything could happen." Especially in the case of a patient pulling out a urinary catheter and then having to tap another patient's artery---for the first time. Masochistic tread of bloody septic bare feet on sharp rusty nails is my description of this journey. Dr. Jauhar makes his rounds and finds the clandestine "schatz" in the wards. Going from physicist (having finished his doctoral dissertation on quantum dots) to physician and then on to writing for the prestigious New York Times. Absolute medicinal morphine in "Intern: A Doctor's Initiation!" Brace yourself, buy and read.