Book: Intern: A Doctor's Initiation
Author: Sandeep Jauhar
Publication Date: December 26, 2007
Rating: 4/5
I love medicine. My elementary school Career Days always entailed me donning my white lab coat and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill scrubs (go Heels!), and preaching the value of medicine to my peers. In middle school, I got to attend a lecture led by a classmate's father, who was an ENT physician, and watch footage of an ear surgery; when our school dedicated a day to learning about Ben Carson, I discovered a new found urgency to become a doctor. And now that I'm in high school, I have the opportunity to take Health Science classes and really dedicate myself to my goal. This is where my obsession with medical media takes its place: I adore Scrubs, I love watching ER documentaries and medical mystery shows, and, of course, I love to read books about doctors.
Intern: A Doctor's Initiation autobiographically charts Doctor Sandeep Jauhar's venture into medicine, beginning with his childhood and ending with tales from his residency. Once a psychics major, Jauhar abandoned his lab in favor of pursuing a medical degree, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his cardiologist brother and please his traditional parents. He lands an internship at New York Hospital, an archaic, gargantuan hospital and clinic that becomes his home for a year as he endures months of rigorous training and eighty-hour weeks. Jauhar becomes depressed and bitter during this process, disillusioned by how little help he can really offer his patients, but is able to complete his internship with the assistance of his girlfriend, brother, and mentors.
Fans of the show Scrubs might think they have a solid idea of what an internship is like--the pilot realistically showcases the anxiety, uncertainty, and fear surrounding a night on-call--but they would never really comprehend the true depths of it until they cracked open this book. Jauhar takes us into what can only be described as a layer of Hell when he recounts a night spent in a cancer ward, where he spends over twenty-four hours on his feet, struggling to help patients he doesn't know. When his thoughts turn dark and anguished with the onset of winter and a debilitating neck injury, the reader can't conjure even a modicum of surprise: the exhaustion and pain he communicates throughout the first half of his residency is enough to depress the entire audience.
That being said, Jauhar's internship self also begins to write magazine and journal articles about his struggles (this is where the concept of this book originates from). While his polished prose and sense of sequence is excellent, he sometimes comes off as spiteful towards his own profession and seems to alienate his peers and even his girlfriend for not understanding him. The scenes with his family drag, primarily because Jauhar can only seem to capture the darker, more demanding sides of them. His depression and feelings of hopelessness are definitely sympathetic, but one can't help but wonder if he meant to push everyone in his life away and cast himself as the victim of a cruel, unforgiving world.
Thankfully, Jauhar manages to escape this miserable experience intact and with a newfound respect for his profession. There is a lot to be learned about medicine, not just from his stories from the emergency room (which range from heartbreaking to horrifying, particularly when Jauhar is almost contaminated with HIV as an infected patient rampages through the halls), but from his struggles to learn what medicine is really about and how he can strive to be the best doctor he can be. While some passages wander, Jauhar manages to keep himself on track and, by the end, we are cheering him down the home stretch, having gone on this painful journey with him and applauding him for making it through the worst of the storm.
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