Bibliography
What have you been reading recently? Have you seen good films? Listen to a great podcast? If you would like to recommend something for this list, please email pre-health@mtholyoke.edu.
Health news
Health section of the New York Times (requires a subscription to read more than a few articles per month)
Goats & Soda: Stories of life in a changing world, health section
Articles & journals
Academic Medicine The monthly peer-reviewed medical journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges
Advice from admission officers on responsible social media use On the ADEA Go Dental blog, by Emil Chuck, Ph.D.
Analysis in Brief (AIB) Two-page, easy-to-read snapshots of topics in academic medicine
Bioethics: Key Concepts and Research - a JSTOR reading list
Gotian R, Neill US. Three steps to landing an undergraduate research internship. Nature. 2019;565(7738):257. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-07830-y.
in-Training: the agora of the medical student community
JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association (full text articles can be accessed through LITS)
New England Journal of Medicine (full text articles can be accessed through LITS)
Sklar, D.P. (n.d.). Cultural Competence: Glimpsing the World Through Our Patients’ Eyes as We Guide Their Care. ACADEMIC MEDICINE, 93(9), 1259–1262. https://doi.org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002322
Reshaping the Journey: American Indians and Alaska Natives in Medicine
SSM Population Health The new online only, open access, peer reviewed journal in all areas relating Social Science research to population health.
Winds of Change Published five times a year by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), Winds of Change is the premier nationally distributed magazine with a single-minded focus on career and educational advancement for American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, First Nations and other Indigenous peoples of North America, with an emphasis on STEM.
Books
Adams, P. (1998). House Calls: How We Can All Heal the World One Visit at a Time. San Francisco: Robert D. Reed Publishers, [1998].
Adams, P., & Mylander, M. (1998). Gesundheit! : bringing good health to you, the medical system, and society through physician service, complementary therapies, humor, and joy. Rochester, Vt. : Healing Arts Press, [1998].
Albom, M. (1997). Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson. New York : Doubleday, [1997].
Alvord, L. A., & Cohen, E. (2000). The scalpel and the silver bear. New York : Bantam Books, 2000.
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. (1990). Education of the osteopathic physician.
Ansell, D. A. (2013). County : life, death and politics at Chicago’s public hospital. Chicago, Illinois : Academy Chicago Publishers, 2013.
Arya, A.N. (2017). Preparing for International Health Experiences: A Practical Guide. New York: Routledge, [2017]. Not in a Five College library but available for review in the pre-health office, Clapp 125.
Bibliography from Leadership in Medicine Book Review Club. An exceptionally well put-together bibliography by the Leadership in Medicine students at Union College/Albany Medical College.
Bickel, J. W. (2000). Women in medicine : getting in, growing, and advancing. Thousand Oaks, [Calif.] : Sage Publications, [2000].
Broyard, Anatole. Intoxicated by My Illness. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992. The former editor of the New York Times Book Review section presents an account of his own illness and reflects on the physician-patient relationship.
Bursztajn, Harold; Feinbloom, Richard; Hamm, Robert; and Brodsky, Archie. (1981). Medical Choices, Medical Chances. How Patients, Families, and Physicians Can Cope with Uncertainty. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, [1981]. The authors describe the importance of acknowledging uncertainty in medicine and strategies for dealing with it.
Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories : teaching and the moral imagination. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, [1989]. Dr. Coles, a psychiatrist, teaches Harvard undergraduates, medical and other graduate students about the lessons we can learn from listening to patients’—and each other’s—stories.
Colgrove, M., Bloomfield, H. H., & McWilliams, P. (1977). How to survive the loss of a love. Cosmopolitan, 197. A physician, a psychologist and a poet present insights about loss for patients and for professionals and others involved in their care.
Collins, M.J. (2009). Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon. New York: Saint Martin's Press [2009].
Davis, S., & Page, L. F. (2013). Living and dying in Brick City: An ER doctor returns home. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau/Random House.
Dittrich, L. R., & Association of American Medical Colleges. (2001). Ten years of medicine and the arts.
Duncan, D. E. (1996). Residents: the perils and promise of educating young doctors. United States of America: Scribner.
Dunlap-Shohl, P. (2015). My degeneration : a journey through Parkinson’s. University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2015].
Dweck, C. S. (2008). Mindset : the new psychology of success. New York : Ballantine Books, 2008.
Fadiman, A. (2012). The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. In presenting the story of the illness of a Hmong patient who has been inserted into the American medical culture, the author describes the consequences of the cultural clash for her and her family’s care.
Fink, S. (2013). Five days at Memorial : life and death in a storm-ravaged hospital. London : Atlantic Books, 2013.
Galanti, G.-A. (1991). Caring for patients from different cultures : case studies from American hospitals. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [1991].
Gawande, A. (2002). Complications : a surgeon’s notes on an imperfect science. New York : Metropolitan Books, 2002.
Genova, L. (2009). Still Alice : a novel. New York : Pocket Books, [2009].
Groopman, Jerome. 2000. Second Opinions: Stories of intuition and choice in a changing world of medicine. Viking Press. A series of eight clinical dramas, each with humble lessons for the future physician.
Groopman, J. E. (2007). How doctors think. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2007.
Gutkind, L. ed. (2013). I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse. In Fact Books.
Kaysen, S. (1994). Girl, interrupted. New York : Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1994.
Kidder, T. (2003). Mountains beyond mountains. New York : Random House, [2003].
Kleinman, A. (1988). The illness narratives : suffering, healing, and the human condition. New York : Basic Books, 1988 Stories of illness and their meaning to patients and families. Different ways in which physicians deal with patients and change.
Kraft, H.S. (2012). Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital. New York: Little, Brown and Company, [2012].
Lerner, B. H. (2014). The good doctor : a father, a son, and the evolution of medical ethics. Boston : Beacon Press, [2014].
Lorde, A. (1997). The cancer journals. San Francisco : Aunt Lute Books, [1997].
Mukherjee, S. (2011). The emperor of all maladies : a biography of cancer. New York : Scribner, 2011.
Newman, D. (2006). Talking with doctors. New York, NY: The Analytic Press/Taylor & Francis Group.
Nuland, S. B. (2009). The soul of medicine : tales from the bedside. New York : Kaplan Pub., [2009]. Summary: The remarkable stories told in this book are filled with the lessons of humanity. They describe that sacrosanct connection between two people we call the doctor-patient relationship, and that other relationship between the mentor and student, so important to the perpetuation of medical knowledge, judgement, wisdom and character.
Ofri, D. (2017). What patients say, what doctors hear. Boston : Beacon Press, [2017].
Pausch, R., & Zaslow, J. (2008). The last lecture. New York : Hyperion, [2008].
Pence, G. E. (2000). Classic cases in medical ethics : accounts of cases that have shaped medical ethics, with philosophical, legal, and historical backgrounds. Boston : McGraw-Hill, [2000].
Radner, G. (2000). It’s always something. New York : Harper Entertainment, 2000.
Remen, R. N. (1996). Kitchen table wisdom : stories that heal. New York : Riverhead Books, 1996.
Remen, R. N. (2000). My grandfather’s blessings: stories of strength, refuge and belonging.
Rivkees, S. A. (2014). Resident on call: a doctor’s reflections on his first years at Mass General. Lyons Press.
Sacks, O. (1984). A leg to stand on. New York : Summit Books, [1984].
Sacks, O. (1990). The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. [New York] : HarperPerennial, 1990.
Sanders, L. (2009). Every patient tells a story: medical mysteries and the art of diagnosis. Broadway.
Savett, L. A. (2002). The human side of medicine : learning what it’s like to be a patient and what it’s like to be a physician. Westport, Conn. : Auburn House, 2002.
Scannell, K. (1999). Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the Aids Epidemic.
Servan-Schreiber, D. (2017). Anti-Cancer: A new way of life. New York: Penguin Books, [2017].
Skloot, R. (2010). The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York : Crown Publishers, [2010].
Svahn, David and Kozak, Alan., Eds. 2002. Let me listen to your heart: Writings by medical students. Basset Healthcare. The challenges, frustrations, and rewards that third year medical students discover when they put aside their textbooks and learn to share intimate moments in their patient lives.
Sweet, V. (2012). God’s hotel : a doctor, a hospital, and a pilgrimage to the heart of medicine. New York : Riverhead Books, 2012. Summary: San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hotel-Dieu (God's Hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves--"anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care-ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years. Laguna Honda, lower tech but human paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished. Gradually, the place transformed the way she understood her work.
Thernstrom, M. (2010). The pain chronicles : cures, myths, mysteries, prayers, diaries, brain scans, healing, and the science of suffering. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
Thomas, L. (1983). The youngest science : notes of a medicine-watcher. New York : Viking Press, 1983.
Verghese, A. (1994). My own country : a doctor’s story of a town and its people in the age of AIDS. New York : Simon & Schuster, [1994]. A physician specializing in infectious diseases writes of his experience in caring for patients with AIDS in rural Tennessee and its impact on his personal life.
Verghese, A. (1998). The tennis partner : a doctor’s story of friendship and loss. New York : HarperCollins, [1998]. The story of the author's growing friendship with an Australian medical student.
Verghese, A. (2009). Cutting for stone : a novel. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
Washington, H. A. (2006). Medical apartheid : the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present. New York : Doubleday, [2006].
Williams, I. (Physician). (2015). The bad doctor. University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2015].
Audio & visual
Meet medical students and residents, clinicians and educators, health care thought leaders and researchers in this podcast from the journal Academic Medicine. Episodes chronicle the stories of these individuals as they experience the science and the art of medicine. Guests delve deeper into the issues shaping medical schools and teaching hospitals today.
All Access: Med School Admissions Podcast
Applying to medical school can be a very complex and confusing process! On top of that, finding reliable and accurate information about the application process can be even more challenging. With nearly 15 years of admissions experience, Christian Essman of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, gives the listener a unique view into the medical school admissions world through a series of revealing interviews with key admissions figures from around the country.
All Access: Med School Admissions brings the listeners into informative and entertaining conversations between admissions colleagues. Listeners will learn about a variety of medical schools, what makes their programs unique, and what they are looking for in their prospective students. Most importantly, Christian will lead the discussion on a variety of medical school admissions-related topics where you will get insight directly from the most authoritative sources out there - his admissions friends.
Antiracism in Medicine podcast
Several episodes available!
Army Dentistry at Work podcast
Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/army-dentistry-at-work/...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/...
Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence podcasts
Doctors Without Borders - films about the organization
If you see a film that isn't available for free, check whether it's on Kanopy (link below)!
Docs With Disabilities Podcast
Join hosts Drs. Lisa Meeks and Pete Poullos as they take a deeper dive into the experiences of health care providers with disabilities through critical conversations with the doctors, researchers, administrators, faculty and policy makers that work to ensure medicine remains an equal opportunity profession.
Documentary film streaming service, available through Mount Holyoke (you should automatically have access if you connect while on campus). Many films on a wide variety of topics within health. Browse through subjects and see what you find!
Harvard Chan: This Week in Health
Harvard Chan: This Week in Health brings you top health headlines—from wellness tips to important global health trends. You'll also hear insight from Harvard Chan experts.
Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.
How do you want to die? A mission to make death part of popular conversation
A growing national movement to normalize end-of-life discussions among family and friends has gained traction in recent months. As Medicare considers whether to cover such conversations with physicians, The Conversation Project, a Boston-based non-profit, is highlighting the importance of talking openly about dying. Special Correspondent Lynn Sherr reports.
ITVS partners with filmmakers who bring untold stories to public broadcasting to make a difference in the world.
Kaiser Health News: An Arm and a Leg Podcast
KHN will co-produce the second season of An Arm and a Leg, which debuts June 4, 2019. In the first season of the podcast, Dan Weissmann, creator and host of the health care podcast, dug up revealing and surprising stories that helped consumers learn more about the complicated world of health care costs. In season two, Weissmann digs into how we’ve ended up with such crazy prices— starting with hospital services like an MRI, prescription drugs in general, and the deep story behind the insane price of insulin, starting with its discovery almost 100 years ago. This season is a public conversation, starting with stories, tips and questions from listeners.
This is available with your MHC login - an amazing resource to stream films on a huge variety of topics, including health & medicine. Try browsing by "health" and you will find nearly 2,000 films!
NIH webinars and presentations
From the NIH Office of Intramural Training & Education: presentations on a wide variety of topics, from career exploration to NIH programs, leadership & Mentorship, wellness & stress reduction, and more.
The Nocturnists podcast
The Nocturnists is a medical storytelling live show and podcast where healthcare workers have permission to pause and examine their inner landscapes. It's a vibrant community of healthcare workers who are awakening themsevles to their own humanity through storytelling.
The Providers (No longer streaming for free at PBS.)
Does your zip code determine your life? The Providers gives a very human face to the physician shortage and opioid epidemic in rural America, following three healthcare professionals who are doing everything they can to make a difference in northern New Mexico at El Centro, a group of safety-net clinics that offer care to anyone who walks through the doors.
Amidst personal struggles that reflect those of their patients, the journeys of the providers unfold as they work to reach those who would otherwise be left out of the healthcare system. With intimate access, the film shows the transformative power of providers’ relationships with marginalized patients, as physicians try to make a difference against overwhelming odds.
Recommended podcasts, from This Is Public Health.
The Waiting Room is a character-driven documentary film that uses extraordinary access to go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. The film – using a blend of cinema verité and characters’ voiceover – offers a raw, intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and hard choices.
The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance. Young victims of gun violence take their turn alongside artists and small business owners who lack insurance. Steel workers, taxi cab drivers and international asylum seekers crowd the halls. The film weaves the stories of several patients – as well as the hospital staff charged with caring for them – as they cope with the complexity of the nation’s public health care system, while weathering the storm of a national recession.
The Waiting Room lays bare the struggle and determination of both a community and an institution coping with limited resources and no road map for navigating a health care landscape marked by historic economic and political dysfunction. It is a film about one hospital, its multifaceted community, and how our common vulnerability to illness binds us together as humans.