A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years As A Medical Student

by Perri Klass

Overview

"Fascinating... Klass writes with wit, intelligence, and a great deal of insight."—The New York Times Book Review

Acclaimed pediatrician, journalist, and novelist Perri Klass offers a provocative look at the ups and downs of medical school from those first exams to the day she became a doctor. In a direct, candid style, Klass shares what it is like to be a first-time mother while attending med school; the unique lingo of the med student; how to deal with every bodily fluid imaginable; and the humor and heartbreak of working with patients. With this collection of essays, Klass established herself as a go-to voice for a generation of med students and doctors, with her frank and witty perspective. Klass also brings a proven ability to make the medical world accessible to the lay reader, through her extensive literary and journalistic experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452272583
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/01/1994
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.34(w) x 7.97(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

Perri Klass is a pediatrician who writes fiction and non-fiction. She writes about children and families, about medicine, about food and travel, and about knitting. She is the author of a novel, The Mercy Rule, and several works of non-fiction, including Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, written in the form of letters to her older son as he starts medical school, and A Not Entirely Benign Procedure.

She lives in New York City, where she is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University, and she has three children of her own. She is also National Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization which works through doctors and nurses to promote parents reading aloud to young children.

Table of Contents

Introduction

THE PRE-CLINICAL YEARS
The Living-in-Sin Potluck and Other Tales of the First Year of Medical School
A Textbook Pregnancy

THE CLINICAL YEARS
The First Time
Crying in the Hospital
Camels, Zebras, and Fascinomas
Learning the Language
Macho
Tempos
The Scrubbed and the Unscrubbed
Emergency Room
Babytalk
Invasions
007s
Enough to Make You Sick
The Prize in the Cracker Jack Box
Stress and Potato Chips
Ignorance
"Who Knows This Patient?"

ISSUES
Power Plays
Disasters Past
Nurses
Baby Poop
One in Ten Thousand
India
When Doctors and Patients Speak Different Languages
AIDS
Taking Precautions
Dying
Curing
Assess and Advise
DNR

PUTTING IT TOGETHER
A Weekend in the Life
Match Day

Conclusion—Baby Doctor

Editorial Reviews

"Fascinating... Klass writes with wit, intelligence, and a great deal of insight."—The New York Times Book Review

“Writing personally and candidly, she brings the reader into her orbit, into the experiences of a thoughtful person, in situations that are comic, difficult, puzzling and often tragic. There are moving instances of a doctor's mandated objectivity while involved with the dying and with the bereaved. In lighter moments, Klass twits pompous members of the healing profession and offers insights on the status of women doctors; they are frequently mistaken for nurses; men never are.”—Publishers Weekly

“General readers and medical students alike will find this book worth reading.”—Library Journal
 

From the Publisher

As a Harvard medical student in 1982, Klass became a contributor to the New York Times ``Hers'' column; this is a collection of the author's diary-like essays describing her medical training, her life as a lover, a woman and a mother. The accounts are informed by the artistry Klass displays in her fiction, Recombinations and I Am Having an Adventure. Writing personally and candidly, she brings the reader into her orbit, into the experiences of a thoughtful person, in situations that are comic, difficult, puzzling and often tragic. There are moving instances of a doctor's mandated objectivity while involved with the dying and with the bereaved. In lighter moments, Klass twits pompous members of the healing profession and offers insights on the status of women doctors; they are frequently mistaken for nursesmen never are. (April)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

You may remember this author's name if you are a reader of the New York Times weekly ``Hers'' column, where Klass's series of articles on being a mother going through medical school appeared. Here Klass, who also wrote the novel Recombinations , collects and expands upon those columns. This is a chronicle of the medical school experience and of the life and attitude changes that take place both subtly and dramatically. General readers and medical students alike will find this book worth reading. Literary Guild alternate. Linda Morgan Davis, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio

Library Journal