Morphine, Ice Cream, Tears: Tales of a City Hospital

Sooner or later we probably will end up in a hospital. Hopefully our experience will be positive. Enjoyed this book and will go on to Dr. Sacco's other books. Incredibly interesting and enlightening stories! thank you, Dr. Sacco.

When I was in high school, I was lucky enough to find this book at my local library, when they were selling used books for 10 cents apiece. While I was preparing to leave secondary education to go to college, reading this book helped to give me a sense of what was life going to be like after finishing medical school, and now that I am a second year medical student, I read it again and again to make sure that I remember the good advice that is enclosed inside: questions that doctors should ask themselves when treating patients (end of the "Lethal Hospital, Deadly Doctors" Chapter), the successes and failures of a medical system that, more or less, still exists today, and last but not least, a decently funny but sobering account of what it is like to be an intern, 80 to 120 hours per week. I highly recommend this book for any aspiring physicians out there.

A doctor friend of mine gave me this book as I was applying to medical schools. I read it and I'm glad I did. It gave me a very realistic picture of what I could expect during my internship year. I'm now in my fourth year of residency and I can now confirm the accuracy of Dr. Sacco's portrayal of the grueling and frequently demoralizing medical training process in the U.S. This book should be required reading for all medical students.

Dr. Sacco's gripping and moving story of his intership year provides an unusually frank account of the grueling medical training our physicians must endure. The author's forcful writing coupled with the sometimes humorous, often heartbreaking experiences he shares with us made this book a real page tuner. Speilberg should option this book so we will finally have a movie about medicine the way it's really practiced. I loved it!