Volume 193 - Issue 11
Lar(ri)kin’s survival guide
Author: Daniel J Scherer
Med J Aust 2010; 193 (11): 708. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb04113.x
Published online: 6 December 2010
Published online: 6 December 2010
101 top tips in medicine: cynical and otherwise.
John Larkin. Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2010 (131pp). ISBN 9781846193989.
JOHN LARKIN is a consultant physician and rheumatologist from Glasgow and, if his writing is anything to go by, is clearly not someone who will ever be accused of taking himself too seriously. His self-described absence of any superior qualifications, testimonials or, indeed, literary merit appear to make him perfect for this “cynical” take on hospital life in the follow-up to his 2005 debut book, Cynical acumen.
101 top tips in medicine is an on-call-style book, but with the sort of home truths we would only have previously expected from the “Fat Man” in the satirical novel The house of God by Samuel Shem (pen-name of psychiatrist Stephen Bergman).
The 101 top tips are divided into categories — cynical, survival, clinical, career and miscellaneous — although the majority have the wry, tell-it-how-it-is style that Larkin does so well. Included are a number of practical day-to-day tips to help you through internship and early residency years, as well as those classic gems that are generally only offered by senior doctors after you’ve learnt them the hard way. Everything from “don’t answer a telephone if it’s not for you” to “always touch a bed before sitting on it” is explained and justified (a hand is far easier to wash than pants, after all).
While you’d be hard pressed to call this a “medical text”, it’s the only one I’ve ever been able to sit down and read from cover to cover. Anyone will be entertained by Larkin’s anecdotes and the liberal use of footnotes that provide a humorous narrative style, but the intended audience is clearly medical students and junior doctors. This book would make a great light read for any junior doctor (or consultant whose sense of humour is still intact) or gift for a fresh graduate.