Books by doctors for doctors: Essential reading for summer
Key Takeaways
Looking for a great book to sink your teeth into this summer?
Vacation reading can be entertaining—and educational for healthcare professionals—at the same time. To help you compile your summer reading list, we’ve selected five must-read books written by doctors for doctors.
Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor's Search for the Perfect Match, by Vanessa Grubbs, MD
Vanessa Grubbs, MD, was a primary care physician when she started dating her future husband, Robert Phillips, an aspiring politician who had advanced kidney disease. In later years, Dr. Grubbs donated a kidney to save her husband’s life. This experience would eventually lead to her fascination with kidneys, leading her to train to become a nephrologist.
In her memoir Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor’s Search for the Perfect Match, she details her journey, beginning with her experiences as an African American girl raised in a small North Carolina town. Interlaced with her personal life story, Dr. Grubbs brings attention to the racism that continues to plague the medical community, highlighting the painful racial disparities that exist in the transplant system.
Read Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers: A Kidney Doctor's Search for the Perfect Match, by Vanessa Grubbs, MD
When We Do Harm, by Danielle Ofri, MD
Danielle Ofri, MD, is a primary care physician at Bellevue Hospital, a clinical professor of medicine at New York University, and editor-in-chief of Bellevue Literary Review. Published during the first COVID-19 surge, When We Do Harm, brings the issues of medical error and patient safety to the forefront. Dr. Ofri sheds light on this important topic by combining current research, her own professional experiences, and humor.
She delves into the underlying causes of medical errors, exploring diagnostic, systemic, and cognitive reasons. She details powerful stories of medical errors, ranging from subtle errors to catastrophic ones. Dr. Ofri provides patients with research on how to protect themselves from medical errors while delving into how racial disparities have a negative impact on quality of care.
Read: When We Do Harm, by Danielle Ofri, MD
Womb With a View: Tales from the Delivery, Emergency and Operating Rooms, by Rebecca Levy-Gantt, DO
Rebecca Levy-Gantt, DO, is an obstetrician and gynecologist originally from New York. After attending medical school in her home state, she moved to Napa, California, where she has practiced medicine for more than 12 years.
In Womb With a View: Tales from the Delivery, Emergency and Operating Rooms, she details moments from her education to her current private practice in a memoir of less than 100 pages. She not only captures joyful moments but also difficult memories of when things have gone wrong.
Despite losses throughout her journey, Dr. Levy-Gantt’s passion about obstetrics and gynecology comes through in her book, which will have a profound impact on other doctors as well as other readers.
Read Womb With a View: Tales from the Delivery, Emergency and Operating Rooms, by Rebecca Levy-Gantt, DO
The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year, by Matt McCarthy, MD
Matt McCarthy, MD, is a physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he serves on the Ethics Committee, and an associate professor of medicine at Weill Cornell. Outside of work, he reviews nonfiction for USA Today and is the editor-in-chief of Current Fungal Infection Reports.
His best-selling book, The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician’s First year, provides insight into the first year of medical residency with honesty and humor. He shares his encounters with various patients from throughout his training. For example, he details his struggle to keep a critical care patient alive as well as how he comforted another patient using stories about his days as a minor league baseball player.
Dr. McCarthy also sheds light on the difficulty in maintaining balance between patient care and self-care as a young doctor.
Read The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year, by Matt McCarthy, MD
The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, by Azra Raza, MD
Azra Raza, MD, an oncologist and cancer researcher at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, believes that many cancer therapeutics don’t offer many benefits and often place a large financial and physical burden on patients.
Instead, she recommends that the healthcare industry place more emphasis on early cancer detection and treatment. In her book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, she discusses these opinions, as well as detailing her personal journey serving as her husband’s oncologist until he succumbed to leukemia.
Read The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, by Azra Raza, MD