White Coat: Becoming A Doctor At Harvard Medical School

Books about the education of physicians are so plentiful they practically constitute their own subgenre. For starters, there's Melvin Konner's Becoming a Doctor, A Not Entirely Benign Procedure by Perri Klass, and several books by Robert Marion (including Learning to Play God, Rotations, and The Intern Blues). Joining the field is Ellen Lerner Rothman with a memoir of her years at Harvard Medical School. It's a workman-like account of learning the art and science of medicine in the era of HMOs, in which paperwork seems to have replaced healing as the main product of hospital bureaucracy. Rothman wrestles with the dilemmas of compassion and objectivity as she encounters patients, learns procedures, and prepares to don the white coat that symbolizes physician competence in a world of backless patient gowns.

Of particular interest are Rothman's accounts of the rabid fan base among medical students for a certain top-rated medical TV drama; they study its jargon almost as exhaustively as they review the physiology of the heart. "It was just like on ER," she notes following an encounter with a traumatic cardiac arrest that ended with the patient's death. The lines between pop culture and science are ever blurred. --Patrizia DiLucchio