Man's 4th Best Hospital
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Man's 4th Best Hospital
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Narrated by:
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Sean Runnette
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Written by:
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Samuel Shem
About this listen
The sequel to the best-selling and highly acclaimed The House of God
Years after the events of The House of God, the Fat Man has been given leadership over a new Future of Medicine Clinic at what is now only Man's 4th Best Hospital, and has persuaded Dr. Roy Basch and some of his intern cohorts to join him to teach a new generation of interns and residents. In a medical landscape dominated by computer screens and corrupted by money, they have one goal: to make medicine humane again.
What follows is a mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and hilarious exploration of how the health-care industry, and especially doctors, have evolved over the past 30 years.
©2019 Samuel Shem (P)2019 Penguin AudioWhat the critics say
“Samuel Shem has challenged generations of doctors in his writing to think deeply about why they chose medicine. His novels illuminate the humanistic core of clinical care, and serve as a bulwark against a system increasingly characterized by avarice and anonymity.” (Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors Think)
“If you want to know why the doctor spends all visit looking at a computer instead of you, and if you want to know how the doctor feels about it, this is the book for you: a mordantly funny tour through modern medicine with a powerful prescription for how to change." (Bill McKibben, best-selling author of The End of Nature and Radio Free Vermont)
“As he did in The House of God, Samuel Shem provides a bitter, caustic and overdue update on the cold and bureaucratic world that awaits the sick and the dying if they are lucky enough to be able to afford it.” (Arthur Caplan, professor of Bioethics at New York University Langone Medical Center)
What listeners say about Man's 4th Best Hospital
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2019-12-06
Moments of greatness
The first word that comes to mind when I think of this work is 'uneven'. Shem is at his best when he's describing the real interactions between doctor and patient - when it works, when it doesn't, and why. Also, he has a very deft touch when writing Dr. Bausch's daughter, Spring, who projects her emotional world onto her rabbit, Olive. These are passages that feel authentic and have tremendous emotional resonance.
Others that seem to fall flat or be eye-rollingly unrealistic. I found a lot of the characterization of the secondary characters was lacking and relied on the reader being familiar with the House of God. Some of the scenes in this work seemed less like organic parts of the whole and more like direct responses to criticisms of HoG, namely the lack of gender parity.
For reference, I work in a hospital that recently brought on Epic.
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