I first read this when it had just come out. I had been living in Canada and had just returned to the States and to the American Medical Business.

I was shocked, distressed, disgusted at what I read. Yet, as I knew many first year residents in hospitals at the same time I read this book, I knew how true it was.

I was thoroughly disgusted with the field that exploited its med students (and especially its residents and young physicians, at the great life-and-often-death expense of patients, just so hospitals and attending physicians can enrich themselves.

No wonder the author became a psychiatrist after writing this book.

Sad to say, much of what went on then still stands.

However, some limits on the number of hours residents can work have been placed, due to obvious patient safety.

Much as I love certain things about this country, out-of-control capitalism is not one of them.

And the medical business, like all other industries in this countries, is a prime example of out-of-control capitalism.

Great reading. And a must for patients. Patients should be as informed as possible about the medical industry and its doctors: what they do, what they don't do, what they can and cannot do, what they know and tell us they know.

I always empathize with residents who are over-worked and over-tired, and wonder how many of them survive those years.

My first career was working in a county hospital as an administrative coordinator for a Family Practice Residency program and as the Credentialing/Privileging coordinator for all of the staff physicians there. What an eye-opener this book was for a then 20-something young woman fresh out of business school. My actual experiences never reached the base level that is described in this book but we were a small facility located in the San Francisco East Bay Area in the 'burbs.

That being said, I think that there is a lot of humor, entertainment and enlightenment value to the book for interns/residents and attendings and the general public who should understand that doctors are human beings. They are not "God-like" and they become just as "irreverent" within their professions as Policemen, Teachers....er...Politicians do.

I have read and re-read this book at least twice and I consider myself a fan of doctors in general.

A fun read. Enjoy.

definitely, the best best best book i have ever read! amazing medical humor and sad truth about medicine - i was laughing loud and some tears escaped too :)
im reading this book again, again and again - i can quote any time any line. i adore this book, as im medic.student.

I've read this book 2 1/2 times now. The first time I only got through half - I was a premed and being a liberal feminist I was offended by the treatment of women. The second time I read it all the way through - I was a first year med student and after ignoring the sexist stuff it was a very funny read - but not all of it was accessible to me with my limited medical knowledge at the time. The third read was recently as a 4th year student. Even more hilarious now that I've been through the experience of the wards. Highly recommended!

I read this book years ago, but I still use references from it today with friends and medical colleagues. I even now have a faculty job at one of the referenced hallowed institutions. It's hilarious, focally outrageous, and somewhat self-serving, but it did have some salient, useful insight. Now I want to read it again.

I was somewhat apprehensive when my uncle, a surgeon, suggested I read this, that, in fact, this is what life is like for a medical intern. From the first page forward, I couldn't put it down. Samuel Shem's caustic, witty, and throughly penetrating writing style had me in stiches for most every day during that week over the summer that I read this. As he described the main character's time in the cardiac ward with the cardiologist who "ran for fitness, fished for calm" I thought back to all the cardiologists I knew and said "THAT's It!" they ARE all like this. This eerie must- have- gone -through -this -to -write -with -this- kind- of -realism pervades the book. Everything has the taste of authenticity. The reader laughs about "buffing and turfing" patents to other wards, and "being a wall" in the ER as opposed to the most despicable "seive."
In short, I loved this book. A truly masterful attempt at capturing the hellacious world of the medical intern and the transformation from college student with only theoretical textbook information to doctor with real world experience.

As a second-year medical student, this book read more like a horror story than like a "classic novel of life and death in an American hospital." Filled with the cynicism and free thinking that was supposed to embody the 70's, the author's mainstay over-the-top-shocker style of writing immediately becomes dry and lifeless before the reader ever notices how poorly the characters are developed. The book could better be interpreted as an emotional outlet for someone who became disenchanted with medical training, lost their way and exercised defense mechanisms that harmed both colleagues and patients.

However, the author does bring to light important issues such as how medicine is taught/learned, the sometimes grim realities behind that training and the importance of outside support vs. internal defense mechanisms in maintaining perspective on a challenging course.

This book will stir a variety of emotions. If you are in a health care profession then you will probably relate to it's content. I would not recommend this book to someone who has an ill love one. The reality can be kind of harsh even for those of us who are in this world of medicine daily. I have spoke with MD's who lived through this era and say that the book is a good replica of what med school was like back then. Younger docs say that is not exactly like this now but the long hours and no sleep still persist. There are still the occasional doc in the closet with the nurse having sex but health care has improve some since the 60's. Reading the book shows you how frustrating it is to give health care to some people and how sometimes it does not matter what you do you can not heal some people and on the other hand some people just won't die even if they want to. In the end I felt very sorry for most of the characters and strangely enough understood their crazy coping mechanisms.

If you are a health-care professional who works or has worked at a large municipal inner-city teaching hospital, you'll feel that Shem was writing about your experiences. It's subtitle includes the wold "classic." It is just that among its countless "cult" followers. As the large municipal inner-city teaching hospital* fades away, it reminds one of the good and the bad of what was the norm from 1910-1970. It's a great gift to anyone who had listened to your stories over the years and is now working in one of the "sterile" versions of those old crucibles of the "iron men" (and women) of yore.

*Think of MGH, Bellevue, Charity, Cook County, Grady, Parkland, etc., 40 years ago. If you're "from" one of them or somewhere similar, it's a must-read item.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. It is beautifully written, by a REALLY gifted writer, who describes an intern's experiences (first year training in a hospital after completing medical school) on the units he is assigned to cover.
One has to have been there (I was, as a nursing student) to follow and appreciate many of this character's experiences. Some sound hyper and exaggerated. This is true for relationships with patients and those with other hospital personnel: from administrators to nursing personnel, ancillaries, and outsiders. The book manages to be hilarious, serious, sad, and often true. Laymen beware! Much in this book is invention, scary to read for potential patients as it describes how interns view new admissions, and how badly they feel treated by their superiors. I'll go with the inventions for what they are, admire the writing, but want to assure future readers there really is concern and compassion for patients in the hospitals I know.

I first read parts of this book when I was a young nursing student back in the 70's. While the references to technology are outdated, it still packs a punch as it describes the suffering of interns and patients. I do NOT like the sexual references to nurses but then again, thats the way thing were when this book was written. At least we are portrayed as being caring and smart. It gives a good overview of the maturation of our medical population as they go through schooling.

was having a tough time dealing with stuff in Nursing school, got handed this by a friend, and it helped sort out the truly important stuff from the personality issues of those teaching!
very well worth the read!

This book is a classic. To be fair, it is a bit out-dated. Internship is not quite what it used to be....but many of the stories still ring very true. And, in any event, it is a great read in its own right. If you really want to know what internship is like, get "Hospital Survival: Lessons Learned in Medical Training" by Grant Cooper. But, for pure entertainment and a look at how internship was in the 1970s-80s, read House of God.

I read this book while recovering from a spinal fusion several years ago. I'd had my surgery at a large teaching hospital and read it to pass the time while I was hospitalized. Every resident, intern, fellow, etc who walked into my room seemed a little un-nerved to see me reading this...but I thought that maybe if I kept them on their toes, the'd keep me on mine.
As an MRI/CT Technologist, daughter of an RN, and sister to a pharmacist, I could relate to the experiences in the book. This should be a must-read for all medical personnel!

Disclaimer: No, I'm not an MD. Yet. Check back with me in ten years or so.

That said, coming from a family where every other person is an MD, RN or allied health provider, I've spent more time in and around the medical profession than I care to think about. I also spent two years as a volunteer patient care liaison in the Emergency Department where this book takes place. (Yes, it's the old BI, nowadays amalgamated into BI-Deaconess Medical Center. For that extra touch of realism, take the Green Line D to Longwood, go sit in the plaza outside the Shapiro Clinical Center and read this book. The Wing of Zock will be two hundred feet up Brookline Ave, and if you walk half a block past that, you'll see the old ED.)

"House of God" isn't all that well written, but it is truthful in a way that very few of its more polished brethren can hope to approach. Put bluntly, life in medicine today is about as far from what you see on "ER" and its ilk as you can get. It's a world of bad caffeine, inhuman call schedules and increasingly sicker patients, more and more micro-management of patient care and less and less regard for the people who provide it. In such a world, it is small wonder that your average emergency MD goes in knowing that he or she will be completely burned out after maybe five or ten years in practice.

As a volunteer, I watched scores of MS and PGYs (medical students and interns/residents, in Medspeak) stumble through exactly the same trials the protagonists of "House of God" face, except none of them got to score with the nurses, and most of them suffered the same kinds of breakdowns, too. The punch of this book hasn't diluted any with time, either - if anything, its key points are even more salient in this world of managed care and patient-a-minute "efficiency" mandates, where doctors and nurses are increasingly seen as faceless, disposable "health services providers."

Read this book, and then go give your doctor a big hug. After what he or she went through to earn those letters, it's far too well deserved.

This book came out in the wake of similar titles like MASH and Catch-22, and describes life as an intern at a hospital in the 1970s. I read it in 1997, and it made me very sad about the state of medicine in this country.

Fortunately, reading some of the some of the location descriptions in the book, it dawned on me that the hospital in the book is Beth Israel in Boston, where I grew up.

I mentioned the book and my realization to my mother, who said that back in the 1960s and 70s, Beth Israel had the reputation of being more or less a butcher shop, a good place to go if you wanted to wind up dead nice and fast, vastly different from their current positive reputation.

Samuel Shem (Stephen Bergman, M.D.) has written an amazingly funny story containing more medical truth than many realize. Follow Roy Basch and five other interns through clinic rotations from their unique vantage point at the bottom of the medical staff at the BMS (Best Medical School). Watch as the "Fat Man" (the omnipotent resident) teaches them the medical secret of doing nothing, discreetly works to maintain their sanity and hopefully makes doctors out of them. Witness an expertly executed "buff and turf" and learn why "gomers don't die," but they do "go to ground." A must read for any medical student and for anyone who has ever wanted an inside look at medicine.

A wonderful wildly provocative heartbreaking book. I enjoy the journey of Roy Basch and his fellow interns dissecting the real world in the most famous teaching hospital.

This book reflects -- how alarming & realistic medicine can be, albeit the irony in medicine inevitably exist in one way or the other.

My first idiom I learned "Knock My Socks Off" which I perfectly describe in this book. Awesome, Provocative, Brilliant with Wild Sense of Humor!!!=).

I read this book in the middle of internship at a busy NYC hospital, and I believe it is a must read for all interns. The book is about how internship at one of the Harvard Hospitals breaks several interns, who ultimately decide to continue in psychiatry rather than internal medicine. While laws now limit the hours we work and I have yet to see a 'tern broken, several points in the book resonate with me and have made me a better doc!
Most importantly, my #1 goal is to "buff and turf" the patient--meaning get the patient well enough to transfer them away. When other 'terns deviate from this policy, I have watched them get overwhelmed. Other important rules of medicine are reiterated in the book's appendix and are worth reading. Those who are not in medicine but who are curious about the field should also read this book. The characters are great and really portray hospital life accurately. To read this book is to "live through" an internship!

In this age of reality TV, many will be fascinated, repelled, disturbed and intrigued about this look in the life of a resident intern at a large teaching hospital. For those in the know, it is a sarcastic yet honest glimpse of the perils of an intern.

House of God focuses on Dr. Roy Basch- a new intern who is working at a large teaching institution. Like all interns, he is thrown in with the instruction to "keep the patient alive." He battles grueling schedules, hopeless patients, attendings and disease. He learns from the chief, interns and residents--and even the patients "gomers".

For those who are unfamiliar with medical training this book would be very disturbing, but for those of us who know what residents go through...it is surprisingly real. I first read this book as an M4- just about to start July 1st internship. As an M4 you are cocky, arrogant and optimistic and this book was funny, sacriligous even. I read it again after finishing residency and was struck by how honest it was to the residency experience..sometimes painfully so.

I liked the book when i first read it, but i can appreciate it more now...It is surprising that the author was able to capture the feelings of interns and be brave enough to put it into book form.

I read this as a first year med student, when everything to come was a great mystery. The world of the training institution (think large, urban teaching hospital here) comes alive in this book, and while it seemed to me at the time that much of it must have been "buffed" by the author to make it more interesting, it turns it out is pretty right on.
I hope it doesn't shatter the readers' confidence in their doctors; what comes accross as a lack of compassion amongst Interns & Residents is just a symptom of the duress of their training ordeal (and their lack of sleep). Happily, excellent skills are usually attained by the concentration of work done, and compassion, if flagging in a few, returns to most all not long after Residency ends.

I've read this book twice. Once before starting medical school and now a second time just completing my residency at the House of God West (HOGW). ...

Everything in this book is as true in managed care as it was in the transition years of the seventies. I assure you, there is still sex in the hospital, it just involves condoms more than in the free love decade. Maybe less as an intern but from second year on... plenty. The surgical and medical residents' call rooms had a communicating door on the cardiac floor at the HOGW and if that isn't proof well...

I can't necessarily recommend this book to laypeople; it's not a work of art. But, every single college student filling out those applications and studying for that MCAT should be *required* to read this book.

And to those laypeople who are somehow shocked by the goings on at a teaching hospital: Just make sure you get that DNI/DNR order straightened out before you too become a gome.

I first read this book at the beginning of my internship (2001) and, though I liked it very much, I found that the author's vision of Medicine was way too dark and bitter. It was more of a novel (like Robin Cook's, but actually good) than anything else for me.

(Some spoilers below)

Then, I read it again after becoming a doctor. And I don't see this book as a novel anymore. I could relate to almost all of Dr.Basch's (main char) crisis, his initial egomania that made him believe he could 'save the world', his withdrawn from friends and loved ones getting to such point that he'd prefer to hang at the ICU than to be with his girlfriend, seeing his intern friends deteriorate physically and psychologically while unaware of his own decay.

I was shocked when I realized I went through a lot of the things he had, including dear people acusing me of being cold and absent.

Some doctors say that internship destroys your inner being, others say that it makes it die and reborn like a Phoenix. Anyway, nobody goes through internship all the way without leaving something behind, and sometimes these things might be what you liked most about yourself. Or the ones that liked you.

Anyway it is an excellent, fun (very sarcastic) and, now I see, VERY realistic.

I love this book and I will likely read it again in a couple of years.

To heck with this being for med students and interns anyone who deals with patients should read House of God. I remember reading this for the first time in nursing school fifteen years ago. I've read it several more times since then and always find myself laughing out loud. In spite of it being a hilariously funny book it is also a cautionary tale and believe it or not one that I have used daily in my nursing practice. Everytime I lower the bed of a disoriented patient I think of it as preventing a turf to ortho, or (God Forbid) a turf to neuro. When I work with new medical students I often watch them "hearing zebras" and it reminds me to be supportive and helpful. I will honestly say that this book is not for the lay man. It can come across as brutal and unfeeling when in reality the point behind this book is to never stop feeling. Just don't let it kill you and always remember it's probably better to hit 'em with some 'roids. Great Book!

Since I am not a medical professional, I certainly cannot comment on the accuracy of Shem's book. But, as a member of an ethnic group that values black humor I can testify that this one hilarious title.

The characters are interns in an urban teaching hospital. As such they are under pressure no human should have to endure. Their response is to laugh, darkly. In my opinion if they hadn't laughed they'd have lost their minds.

There are so many wonderful characters--the Fat Man, the resident who knows all, Little Otto, "whose name still rings no bells ding, ding in Stockholm." I'm not explaining Little Otto to you; go read the book.

_The House of God_ was written in the 1970's and is a product of that time. Shem needs to revise the book to tell the world what horrors managed care has brought to the lives of overworked and underpaid interns and residents. I have my suspicion that wrangling with insurance companies has tripled their insane workload.

If you are fortunate enough to be under the care of a good physician, read this if only to appreciate how damn hard they work.

This is now a hallowed classic, yes it's dated (set in the 70s) but that doesn't stop the impact and the occasional period point (like the sexual promiscuity) is easily overlooked.

I met Shem (a pseudoname)in the 80s at a meeting (he's a psychiatrist from Boston) and although I'm sure other reviewers have met him as well, he was very much full of himself with us. Most of us were not impressed....especially since he was not open to any criticisms of either his book or the issues surrounding patient care failings of the American health care system.

That said, the book should be required reading for anyone serious about a medical career. But you should read better stuff as well....start with any poem or story by John Stone, William Carlos Williams' Doctor Stories, Richard Selzer's books (especially Letters To A Young Doctor), and Jay Katz' The Silent World of Doctor and Patient.

I read *The House of God* the year after I completed my own internship, while running a rural clinic (a la NORTHERN EXPOSURE, but back during the Carter Administration) and contending with the first onslaught of Managed Money (also known as Mangled Care).

It was strange. I recognized the unarguable truth of the Laws of the House of God, and knew the Fat Man and Jo (the Journal Club Maniac) and all the slurpers and sleazebags and "physician entrepreneurs" for whom I'd spent a year of my life doing scut while salvaging their patients. I couldn't stop laughing through the first half of the book, and then a curious thing happened.

The second half of the novel left me more and more depressed, remembering the bleakness and pain of that year, and summoning up the hard lessons I had learned -- and was still learning as a young physician in the first years of practice. It reminded me that no matter what I did, the slurpers and the self-righteous stuffed shirts in my profession were going to win. They were going to keep on degrading and destroying patients and their families, gorging on the increasing wealth being poured into "the health care industry," and beating the hell out of decent physicians who actually dared give a damn about the humanity of the people who come to us for treatment.

And now, nearly three decades later, the laughs are completely gone and the truth is beyond concealment. *The House of God* is a wonderful glimpse of life as a scutpuppy back in the '70s, yes -- but more than that, it's a prophetic anticipation of the destruction of what was once a pretty decent profession, working to achieve something more than a favorable return on investment.

The '70s weren't "the good old days" by any stretch of the imagination, but who could've believed back then that the 21st Century was going to be so godawfully much worse?

the author makes only a few good remarks on medical education and training. The books tries to hard to be humouristic and lacks the real cynicism and sarcasm that comes after a decade working in medicine.

There are all kinds of things I hate about this book. I hate remembering how long I would go without sleep and the psychic torture that an internship inflicts on you. I hated the depersonalization of patients. I hated the sexual escapades. Most of all, I hated having in print the real feelings of an intern who has been up for three days - praying on the way to the ER that that Nursing Home Gomer with 20 fatal diagnoses would have the decency to croak before you got there so you could get an extra five minutes of sleep or a stale doughnut before the cafeteria closed again.

Shem portrays masterfully the jumble of emotions of a typical intern. There is a superficial level of glossy brown-nosing that got you into med school in the first place. Buzz words like compassion, continuity of care and empathy are used with the teaching physicians and in meetings. Then there is a deeper level of survival where you would kill your mother for 5 minutes of sleep or being able to crap without the code blue pager going off. This level is usually not discussed or written about in many of the typical intern coming-of-age books out there. Not because it isn't true, but because it's uncomfortable and offensive to non-physicians. Shem is the master of this level of medical thinking. No one else even comes close. Shem approaches but doesn't quite get to an even more primal level - that of duty. This level is what keeps an intern from punching his residency directors or the arrogant surgeon who asks him "What is the difference between a sh*thead and a brown-noser" and then tells you the answer is depth perception.(True story) It's what makes you do your best when you know the patient is hopeless or even abusive as you try your best to save them from themselves or some disease.

The humor is black as night and the sex is soft-core porn, according to my nephew in medical school to whom I sent a copy of this book.

House of God has two profound themes. The first is a detailed description of medicine and medical training. This theme is presented with black humor, and some (but not as much as you think) exaggeration. I have read nothing that does this better. The second theme of the book is universal, however. It is the theme of Man vs. World and the World wins, but the Man is too maimed to know it.

The book still disturbs and haunts me because Shem puts in print graphically and eloquently some of the thoughts and occurences that we don't even admit to ourselves.

Granted the book is exaggerated but I can find no book that catches the flavor of existential angst of internship as well as House of God does. I go back to it (and the movie) like it is an old friend, the only one that truly understands what I go through daily as an attending physician. Yes, folks, it doesn't get much better beyond internship! There is a lot of denial amongst doctors which leads to alienation. Shem is probably one of the few who have given us the truth. Medicine is a hard path to take in life and much has changed since managed care took over. I wish another Samuel Shem would come along to write a Revisited contemporary version of House of God in which the doctors are played by the patient's insurance representatives. They would go on daily rounds discussing how they can refuse every test, medication or procedure that their patient requests. In this revised House of God, the real doctors never see their patients because they have to spend all their time down in medical records filling out endless insurance forms and complying with federal regulations. Fatman would be very happy.

The HOUSE OF GOD was originally published in the 1970's when it was relatively more fashionable to throw eggs at anything that was "establishment". In this darkly humorous novel, the target is the U.S. medical profession - specifically, the training young physicians receive at the beginning of their careers.

We follow the education of Dr. Roy Basch during the year of his hospital internship in the HOUSE OF GOD after graduating from the Best Medical School. Almost immediately, he's introduced to the patient population that will be his nemesis - the Gomers (the acronym for Get Out of My Emergency Room). Gomers are geriatric, mentally disoriented, chronically ill, debilitated adults who get no better, yet never manage to die on their own. Dr. Roy can choose as a role model either the Fat Man or Jo, two second-year doctor-trainees ("residents"). The Fat Man's philosophy is to do nothing to treat the Gomers, while Jo will attempt every heroic procedure in the book. Paradoxically, Gomers get better, or at least remain stable, under the former regimen, but get worse and die under the latter. At the other end of the patient scale are those relatively young admissions that die tragically no matter what. After several months of experiencing this and exposure to the incompetence and/or mercenary greed of the private physicians on the hospital staff, Basch is sustained in this psychologically and professionally crushing environment only by the sex he has with Nurse Molly. Then, even that isn't enough, and Roy alienates his friends by becoming withdrawn, sarcastic, and obnoxious. Can our hero, all idealism now lost, be saved before he drops out or commits suicide?

Since the HOUSE OF GOD was authored by a physician, Samuel Shem, I give him the benefit of the doubt that his description of the dehumanizing experience that is a medical internship in a large, urban medical center is at least partly accurate. And, it is humorous, at least until the reader realizes that each one of us is a potential Gomer, at which point the plot becomes less cause for chuckles. God forbid that we should become victims of such medical malpractice as found within these pages.

The greatest failing of this novel in the year 2001 is that it's dated. In this age of AIDS, I would doubt that `terns" are nowadays as promiscuous as depicted. And, since many physicians are now not much more than salaried drones for the HMOs, the egotism of the medical profession as a whole is not quite the balloon to be popped that it once was.

As an alternative to Shem's novel, I would recommend the 1971 cinematic black comedy THE HOSPITAL, starring George C. Scott, since it touches on much the same themes. Scott is at his very best, and the movie can be viewed more quickly than this book can be read. At 420 pages, the latter got a little tiresome.

I am a physician who completed a residency in Psychiatry. We had to do four months of medicine in our first year. The book is incredibly accurate with regard to the anxieties and fears that an intern has. These are too numerous to mention here. I'll probably never read the book again as those memories are too painful and I never want to go through that cruelty again. Being an intern means losing yourself; your patients become your life. I only gave it three stars because some parts of the book seem like verbatim copies out of Joseph Heller's Catch 22. Otherwise 5 stars for authenticity.

This appears to be an elaborated autobiography of the author's internship experiences and a rationalization of his 'abandonment' of medicine for psychiatry.

There is much hilarious insight into 70's hospital life, with some fanciful sexism thrown in, presumably to keep things interesting, but which may have the opposite effect these days.

My one disappointment in the book is that the second half of the book rings quite false to me. I can understand the validity of the author's attraction for psychiatry, as a means to exploit his training without having to actually touch patients, but his portrayal of it as actually being more curative than medicine is quite a stretch, and sounds like quite the rationalization.

The portrayal of the hyper analytic Freudian girlfriend as the means to his recovery of Shem's humanity, strikes me as an over the top rationalization of his resignation to their marriage. She does not sound at all human in his characterization, and makes me wonder about the real-life counterpart to this character.

The one anecdote in the book that sounded to me like a true account of psychological healing was the mime show of Marcel Marceau. If this book is ever made into a movie, this would make a wonderfully touching scene. I have to believe it is based on an actual experience of the author's.

I noticed that some readers here seem to have been annoyed by the recurrent Irish cop characters, but I found them quite enjoyable figures, sort of Shakespearean characters who function as the observers of the story.

Overall, a fun read, and a valuable account of the reality of an important profession, occasionally marred by superfluous scenes. Given that, it's reputation as on a par with Catch-22 is quite deserved, in my opinion.

Laughter *is* the best medicine!

Transcends mere medicine, describing how to survive in a corporate culture where the objects of one's work are designed to make one commit suicide. How to achieve by doing nothing. How to recognize and deal with ignorant and fanatic managers. How to recognize and learn from the rare wise mentors.

The book's 70's sexism falls a little flat these days, but deep down therapeutic laughter is still abundant in this book!

Having read the book as a medical student, some contents proved at best foreign, strange, and at times shocking...as a surgical intern in an urban level one trauma center, many of the poignant episodes regarding such items as "Gomers go to ground..." are now scarily relevant. For those medical students seeking a true, but frequently exaggerated view of the life of a house officer (medicine, surgery,OB/Gyn etc.), this text will satisfy. Though dated with respect to some issues such as harrassment, you will find that the characters still exist...they're just working twenty years later in places like Atlanta, New York, Miami, and Shreveport.

Samuel Shem's wacky story of six brilliant interns is both laugh out loud funny, and poignant at the same time. Written in the seventies it almost became required reading for medical students, with many of them adopting the vocabulary used in the book. The constant high stress is sometimes only relieved by the erotic couplings of the nurses and interns, but the effects and demands of the hospital takes it's toll on each of the characters with very different results.The book definitely took some turns I didn't expect, and all in all I found this a really satisfying read.

Any medical professional who reads this will find that many phrases now common (especially in teaching hospitals) originated in this book. I have read this book several times in my nursing career, and the longer I've been in the profession, the more I understand it. Even laypeople who enjoy the show "ER" will note that some of the catchphrases of that show got their start here. Now that the book is getting older, many people may assume that hospitals aren't really like the one described here. In some ways, they aren't--the days of being admitted to the hospital just for tests are long gone, and most hospital stays are far shorter now than they were then. That said, the medical hierarchy, the cynicism, and the gallows humor are very much alive and well. I think they always will be.

Anyone considering reading this should be warned that there are sexual references that are frequent and crude, not to mention completely unnecessary. There is also a very warped view of women, including nurses, social workers, and female doctors. I would love to see this book rewritten with a less chauvinistic tone. The main message of the book is too important to miss.

Lastly, the "LAWS" in the book may seem very tongue in cheek, but the interesting thing is that they are actually true. And every time I respond to a cardiac arrest, I take my own pulse first.

This novel is a candid often shocking account of a young doctor's year as a resident in a large New York hospital. The author is a professor at Harvard Medical school and a psychologist. His experiences provide a great basis for this novel which seems so real it is often difficult to believe it is fiction. The character development is excellent. The reader begins to love characters like the sagely "Fat Man" and the other young doctors and hate the bureaucracy that leads the doctors to disillusionment. Even if you do not really like medicine the book is interesting because it is a study of a unique psychological world. Shem's story draws the reader evokes powerful emotions. The story is quick moving and never dull the resolution is perfect. This is a masterpiece. It was so good I went out to buy Shem's other novel "Mount Misery" which was also good but lacked the energy and refinement of "The House of God"

I think my title pretty well defines this books -there's a lot of humor in it, quite a lot of struggles, and the reader gets to see what an intern goes through...

But some how - the "wild sex session is a solution for everything" attitude was a little too childish in my taste. I'm sure some of it is true to life, but hopefully - our doctors are a little more grownup...

but it has a real ring of the ugly truth, heartbreaking and hysterically funny as it is. I read this book when my boyfriend (now husband) was in medical school and he swore that it is all true (with the exeception of the sex...so either 1) times have changed; 2) the author exaggerated; 3) he's protecting me). I would recommend this to anyone with a loved one in the medical profession--just to see where some of the frustration and cynicism comes from.

There is a well-known phenomenon in health care called "reality shock." It occurs when an idealistic student practitioner emerges from the educational process, bright-eyed, scrubbed and shining, and learns what the hospital industry is REALLY like. The light at the end of the tunnel can be seen (according to the studies on this process) when the new professional regains a sense of humor. When I graduated from college with a nursing degree, I went to work for a huge west coast HMO that shall remain nameless; after a year on the wards I was ready to lay down in front of a bus. I was working nights, caring for 22 patients with one unlicensed assistant, facing 28-year-old geniuses with metastatic cancer, or middle-aged alcoholics who would disconnect their IV lines and watch the blood splash on the floor, or .. well you get the idea. Somebody gave me "House of God" before a weekend off. By the end of the book I was laughing and crying and rediscovering just why I'd gotten into this business to begin with. If you're a health care professional and haven't read this yet, READ IT! If you're a "frequent flyer" in the health-care system and can't figure out why caregivers laugh at things that are absolutely NOT funny to the Real World, this book will tell you. Send this book to your senators and representatives. Send a case to your insurance carrier's Utilization Review department. And thank god that our anonymous author had the guts to write the truth.

To the lay-readers who find the book's images and points of view both horrifying and repulsive, I would say only this: As a street paramedic I fully empathize with any experienced doctor, nurse, P.A., or other medical practitioner, who happens to be a little "crispy around the edges." Medicine at any level of practice is often a mental beat-down, frequently unrewarding, and always tough. The "gallows-humor" that HOG depicts so graphically is a defense-mechanism for a lot of health-care workers. Myself included. You either succumb to its temptation, or you burn out. And in that case, you're no good to anyone, least of all your patients. If you read the book from a perspective outside the medical profession, please keep an open mind and you will love the book as much as we who are "in the know" do. And if that doesn't work, you could always try walking a mile in our shoes...

The first time I read this book was in 1981, before starting medical school. I thought it witty but so cynical that I did not like it. I read it again before starting residency. I now recognized a few of the characters. Through residency there were frequent allusions to "buff and turf", "orthopedic height" and what could be reached with a large gauge needle. Although HOG was not a survival manual it did give me a sense of deja vu at times. I read it a third time after residency. My only complaint is that it completely left out an important element of the intern experience; the drug reps.

House of God is a nicely written book - it is a quick read thanks to its fluency. Events happen so fast in the life of the portrayed intern that they simply fly by, which Shem carries across to the reader by not clearly distinguishing them by paragraphs or chapters. This might perhaps not be suitable to all readers. The sarcasm and reality mix quite well and if you are not a doctor yourself, you think twice before entering a hospital next time. The only character I truly didn't enjoy was Berry, the girlfriend of the main protagonist, and her neverending Freudian anecdotes. But this might derive from the fact that I am coming from the psychological side of this profession, who outdated Freud some time ago.

Who liked this book might also enjoy "The Year of the Intern" by Robin Cook, which is quite different from his nowadays trash novels.

HOG is a well known classic among us hospital folks. Shem captures perfectly the spirit of exhaustion, cynicism, and sarcasm that one finds among interns (and nurses and medics as well!). I agree with some of the previous reviewers who feel much of the sex in the book is gratuitous, and could have been left out without detracting from the narrative (plus, it doesn't really reflect reality)... A good read, but there's probably other books out there that deal with internship year (I just finished mine two months ago) that can be as insightful and revealing, without the dross.

I have read this book many times, and have recommended it to many of my friends and co-workers. Even though, I feel it is a wonderful book, I don't think the general lay person would be able to get in to it. It is very technical in places and cruel in others. I am a nurse in an emergency department, and feel that I am jaded enough to appreciate the truth and sick humor of this book. I think that one would have to be exposed to horrors of human life that medical personnel face on a daily basis to understand the true meaning of this classic.

While not as spellbinding as "The Triumph and the Glory" or as witty as "Catch 22", "House of God" is a fascinating look inside the training of our physicians, written by one who has been through the trial by fire of residency. We need reforms in the field of post medical school practice, the current system is insane.

This book starts with a young doctor reminising about his experience as an intern at a busy hospital in the city. He leaves nothing out and skillfully incorporates his own style of language and phrases. He has these rules of the house of God which are even listed at the end of the book which are really priceless. The unhindered honesty is another great aspect. The book takes place in the 70's and the social genre is not left out. He honestly and accuratly includes his sexual lust and sexual escapades with many a nurse at the hospital. Also, about the dogma of ethics and morality of the doctor's, he shows them to be human and concerned from a very layman point of view. Some things here can be sickly humorous but nontheless interesting to read. An excellent book for the unshockable and interested reader.

I will be a first-year medical student this year, and after reading The House of God, I almost changed my mind! The author writes about the harsh side of medical training that most people either skim over or fail to mention at all. The characters are all very real, imperfect, and interesting. My only complaint is that someone should write an updated version of this story since the role of women and minorities as doctors has changed considerably since this novel was written.

The House of Godd is a book that all young doctors should read. It is also a book that some older doctors should read to remember what it was really like. The rules and the exploration of the Rules of the House of God are the highlight. However the exploration of the sexual activities of the doctors, no matter how true it may have been, is a little gratuitous.