Monday Mornings; Sanjay Gupta

Title: Monday Mornings

Author:  Sanjay Gupta, MD

Publication Year: 2012

Publisher: Hachette Audio

Edition: audiobook 

Reader: Christian Rummel (very good)

Source: Library 

Date Completed: 6/2012

Rating: 4/5

Recommend: yes

 

Monday Mornings, is a fictionalized account of the personal and professional lives of five surgeons working at Chelsea General Hospital in Michigan.   Every Monday Morning at 6:00 the surgeons hold a weekly meeting (M&M - Morality and Morbidity) to discuss their professional mistakes and cases which lead to a patient's death.  No one else is allowed in their meeting, and no surgeon is excused from attending. At one time or another everyone gets their turn being center-stage among their peers. While some of the medical mistakes experienced by the surgeons are much less serious than others, the purpose of the open discussion among peers is to avoid similar issues in the future, by learning from each others mistakes.

 

I enjoyed this book, but I must say that the individual stories for the most part were not memorable.  The only story that lingered for me was one that involved the death of a young boy, a death that haunted the surgeon and nearly ended his career as well.  The book is a reminder that even the best of surgeons are not perfect and that medical mistakes can and do happen. Surgeons are not Gods, they are very real everyday people with personal issues and other things on their minds besides medicine.

The audio book reader, Christian Rummel, did a great job keeping the story lively enough to hold my interest, but this book might not be one that works for everyone. 

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the chief medical correspondent for CNN. Gupta, is Chief of Neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital, and a member of the staff and faculty at the Emory University School of Medicine.