The real doctor will see you shortly A physician's first year

The teeth-grinding, fidgety narrator of this rousing memoir describes his tumultuous year of medical internship at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, a 12-month marathon noteworthy for a steep learning curve, emotional extremes, and chronic sleep deprivation. Bombarded by a surplus of sick patients, a pager that rarely quits buzzing, hundreds of necessary little daily tasks, and a deluge of facts to remember, the newly minted Dr. McCarthy is overwhelmed and anxious, empathic and resilient. The poignant stories of patients are preserved in his memory: a good-natured guy waiting for a heart transplant and a young woman who ingested 16 bags of heroin. He fondly recalls fellow interns, role-model residents, and mentors. He becomes adept at resuscitating people who have suffered cardiac arrest, and he accidentally pokes his index finger with a needle contaminated by blood from a man with HIV. Although worn down and burned out during his first year of internal-medicine training, McCarthy morphs into a confident and competent physician: knowledgeable, skilled, and emotionally connected to patients. A genuine glimpse at the making of a doctor.--Miksanek, Tony Copyright 2015 Booklist

McCarthy follows his controversial tell-all about his brief baseball career, Odd Man Out, with an account of his grueling first-year internship at one of New York's premier hospitals. Here, the New York-Presbyterian Hospital attending doctor is hardest on himself: he expresses guilt over a missed diagnosis with his first patient, coldly brought to his attention by the patient's angry primary doctor, and learns a sobering lesson about the doctor-patient relationship from a patient awaiting a heart transplant. Along the way, he is guided by others, such as the second-year resident who gives him the tough love and experience required to make it through a rotation in the Cardiac Care Unit, the "real doctor" at the hospital's clinic who helps him make independent-though not always perfect-decisions, and the physician who teaches him that through medicine "it is possible to reach the unreachable." McCarthy's story is one of transformation. "I felt different now because I was different," he writes. "I was looking out for my patients, not myself." McCarthy's growth will seem familiar to everyone traveling a path of self-discovery. Agent: Scott Waxman, Waxman Leavell Literary Agency (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.