The Soul of a Doctor: Harvard Medical Students Face Life and Death Paperback – June 2, 2006

This book gives an inside look at the experiences of many third year medical students as they endure the clinical rotations. Each chapter is written by a different medical student. The title is quite appropro, as well as reading the nuts and bolts of learning to be a doctor, the reader gets a glimpse of the innter thoughts, the "soul" of these medical students. I recommend this book especially for relatives and friends of medical students, to get a feel for what the med student is experiencing, both the visible activities, and invisible thought process of the future doctors in training.

This is a fascinating glimpse of what it's like to begin a career in medicine. Clearly it is important to be open-minded when working with medical students & remember that they are pursuing their goals under a great deal of pressure. Not only must they ingest & retain all the instructional materials, as well as proper techniques of hands-on care, but to be successful they must also develop many intuitive skills required to improve patient interactions that could quite probably make them more highly valued & appreciated as physicians. All this must be accomplished while balancing their personal lives & maintaining at least a basic to do list of daily activities! See if you would have what it takes to walk in their shoes.

I enjoyed this book for its honesty, and openness in talking about patients. It lets you see from the medical professional view. The mistakes made, and how things can be improved upon. How students should be trained, and that textbooks can't teach everything. I just wish it had been longer. Enjoyed their perspective.

I love this book, the way they have their experience with patients written is amazing, very interesting, medicine topics is one of my favorites

Every pre-med and medical student should read this book. As I was told by a doctor that I was working with, med students tend to lose their humanity in medical school. I think the essays in this book are inspirational and could help a weary med student during clinical rotations and residency to not lose sight of their purpose. Doctors are healers, not automatons.

This book shows you just how much a young doctor feels and most likely an older one too. You don't know this by the way a doctor conducts himself while examining you. They all seem uncaring and professional as they must be, but there is a whole lot of feeling in treating you.

Good insites on medical care from students just being introduced to the field. Reality can be very surprising. It was interesting to see what the students learned and the type of patients that left a mark on the students lives. More meaningful if the reader has some idea of medicine.

As a long time physician, I found this an interesting read. For the lay person, it highlights many of the struggles that physicians dael with as we learn that medicine is an art and not a science. The old training was to distance yourselves from the patient emotionally but luckily for me, my father was a primary care MD in the mold of Marcus Welby and the personal touch is valuable in every specialty. It would have been nice to get a little more background on each author. Also, this is Harvard Medical School so the experience might be skewed by being at an academic mecca.