Health Literature

56 Books Every Healthcare Professional Should Read

Doctors from White Sands shared their literary preferences and made a list of books that every doctor should read.

1. How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Gregor, MD and Gene Stone
2. The Buoy Projects: A Story of Breast Cancer, Bucket Lists, Life Lessons, Facebook and Love by Lorna J. Brunelle
3. Silence Kills: Speaking Out and Saving Lives by Lee Gutkind
4. Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work by Dinah Miller, MD; Annette Hanson, MD; and Steven Roy Daviss, MD
5. How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter by Sherwin Nuland, MD
6. Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor by William Davis, MD
7. Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results by Michael E. Porter and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg
8. Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs and Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Michael J. Collins, MD
9. Health Journeys: A Meditation to Help You with Healthful Sleep by Belleruth Naparstek.
10. Revolutionary Medicine: The Founding Fathers and Mothers in Sickness and in Health by Jeanne Abrams
11. Sugar Crush: How to Reduce Inflammation, Reverse Nerve Damage, and Reclaim Good Health by Richard Jacoby and Raquel Baldelomar
12. This Side of Doctoring: Reflections from Women in Medicine by Eliza Chin, MD
13. Gifted Hands by Ben Carson, MD
14. Leadership is an Art by Max Depree
15. Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization Through Values-Based Leadership by Harry M. Kraemer
16. Medicine: The Definitive Illustrated History by DK.
17. A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student by Perri Klass, MD
18. When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery by Frank Vertosick, MD
19. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
20. Better: A Surgeon’s Note on Performance by Atul Gawande, MD
21. Cutting for Stone by Stanford physician Abraham Verghese, MD
22. Medicine Men: Extreme Appalachian Doctoring by Carolyn Jourdan.
23. Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky
24. Attending: Medicine, Mindfulness, and Humanity by Dr. Ronald Epstein
25. The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes from an Uncertain Science by Siddhartha Mukherjee
26. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
27. Crisis in U.S. Health Care: Corporate Power vs. The Common Good by John Geyman, MD
28. The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside by Sherwin Nuland, MD
29. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
30. Love’s Executioner by Irvin Yalom, MD
31. This Won’t Hurt a Bit (and Other White Lies) by Michelle Au, MD
32. To Heaven and Back: A Doctor’s Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again by Mary Neal, MD
33. StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
34. Medicaid Politics and Policy by Judith D. Moore and David G. Smith
35. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
36. Too Busy for Your Own Good: Get More Done in Less Time with Even More Energy by Connie Merritt
37. The Creative Destruction of Medicine by Eric Topol, M.D
38. The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
39. Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
40. The Comfort Garden: Tales from the Trauma Unit by Laurie Barkin
41. How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
42. Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
43. How Not to Die: Surprising Lessons on Living Longer, Safer, and Healthier by Jan Garavaglia
44. Helping Children Overcome Fear in a Medical Setting by Rob Luka
45. Complaint Free World by Will Bowen
46. Conspiracies of Kindness: The Craft of Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill by Michael Ortiz
47. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
48. The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands by Eric Topol
49. In Search of Good Medicine: Hospital Marketing Strategies to Engage Healthcare Consumers by Mark D. Shipley
50. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee, M.D
51. The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida,
52. The President Is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery at Sea and Vilifies the Courageous
53. Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth by Matthew Algeo
54. The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery by Wendy Moore
55. The Soul of a Doctor by Susan Pories, M.D., Sachin H. Jain and Gordon Harper, M.D.
56. In Stitches by Anthony Youn, M.D.