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The Cost-Effective Use of Leeches and Other Musings of a Medical School Survivor
Jeffrey A. Drayer, M.D.

Extras:
Chop On Pop
Road Warrior

Medicine may be one of the world's most respected professions but, as the author discovered, medical students don't enjoy the same adulation. This witty satire chronicles one student's journey through the four years of hilarious hell known as medical school. these essays (and medical ditties based on Dr. Seuss) provide an insider's guide to the information they won't tell you in the interview. Discover how gross anatomy really is, how using leeches can solve the healthcare crisis, and why the Greek theory of the four humours makes sense for 20th-century physicians.

ISBN: 1-883620-13-9 Softcover 141 pp
Catalog #: 017 Price: $ 14.95

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Chicken Soup for the Medical Student Soul

A review from The New Physician by Audrey Young, M.D.
If you thought coming to medical school would be a series of epiphanies-the initial horror of cadaver lab, the thrill of deliver- ing a baby, the adrenaline rush of the ER-think again. Dr. Jeffrey A Drayer's hilarious new book, The Cost-Effective Use of Leeches: and Other Musings of a Medical School Survivor (Galen Press, $14.95), delivers one unforgettable, punch: Medical school is nothing like what you see on television.
At first glance, this book presents itself as a simple, funny collection of half-conscious thoughts generated during the idle hours at an operating table or during a dull lecture class in medical school.
Drayer devotes one essay, for example, to debating the temptations of a sample medication closet. In another, he worries that a surgical career will preclude him from meeting the future Mrs. Drayer. And later in the book, he dreams of the completely honest residency application: "All my life, I've wanted to be a dermatologist. Why dermatology? dermatologists have almost no call, I'll tell you the truth. I wasn't looking don't work on weekends, don't deal terribly with sick people, have patients who can actually pay. Nothing could be further from the truth."
Leeches achieves more than just laughs, though. At its best, Drayer's writing shines with satire. He attacks mindless tradition, politicking and the abuse medical students endure on the wards. At times, he becomes something of a medical student anti-hero charged with exposing the fakery in medicine and doctoring.
Sometimes the joking lapses into cynicism, however, and his vignettes betray an awkward sense of medical territoriality. In one essay, for exampIe, Drayer dreams of starting a program that trains nurse practitioners to work as brain surgeons-a comment on the encroachment of mid-level practitioners into historically doctor-dominated realms. This piece offers little more than a grumbling disaffection with health care's constant belt-tightening.
Despite the rare lapse, Drayer achieves two things that are highly unusual in medical writing. First, he serves up witty and ironic commentary about an often fatally serious profession; readers with an ear for intelligent humor are certain to find pleasure in this book.
Second, and more importantly, Drayer captures plainly and genuinely what being a medical student feels like. Studenthood is terribly bewil- dering and hardly glamorous, and medical students are likely to find great comfort in Drayer's funny, understated observations about the grind of medical training.
You won't get that from "ER"

Table Of Contents

You Wrote A Book?!
A Curriculum Fit For A King
A Personalized Lexicon
BOOK ONE
In The Beginning
Cynical Arts
How Gross Is Anatomy?
The Thorax
We Hold These Truths To Be Cell(f)-Evident
Localize Your Own Lesions
Bugs' Prey Road Warrior ,
The Cad In The Dad
My Cafe Au Lait Spot
Neurosurgery Made Simplistic
BOOK TWO
I Don't Think I Know Anything
The Orient(ation) Express
The Death Of Clinical Arts ("So, How Does Being Dead Make You Feel?")
Chop On Pop
In The Garden Of Eden
But I Play One On TV
Sew Close, Yet Sew Far Away
How The Grinch Stole Christmas Factor
The VA Spa
The Great Bacteria Myth
Cents And Sensibilities
PTSD: Pediatrics Traumatic Stress Disorder
One Cone, Two Cone, Red Cone, Blue Cone
Back To The Future
Soap Box
BOOK THREE
Postcard From The Edges
Morton Hears A Murmur
True Lies
Life As A Lab Rat
Physician Heal Thyself
The ABCs Of Radiology
Medicine Is "Grrreat"
How Many Lawyers Does It Take
Congratulations, You've Been Fired
Publish Or Perish (I'd Rather Perish)
Honduras, I Hardly Knew Thee
The Boreds
The Boreds, Part 2

BOOK FOUR

Pros And Consults
Movie Madness
The Skin Game
Sub-I Of The Tiger
Drayer Does Dallas
IGreen Sputum And Phlegm
In The Joint

©1998-2001, Galen Press, Ltd., Tucson, AZ

Extras:
Chop On Pop
Road Warrior

 

© Copyright 2001-2013 Galen Press, Ltd.