Howdy y’all!
I’m about to wrap up my family medicine clerkship that I’m doing with an old friend as my faculty (another of the perks of being an older medical student). He has been a great teacher and a wonderful host (it’s an away rotation for me and he and his family have let me stay with them).
Anyway, I’d like to get him a thank you gift and am looking for just the right one. He enjoys books and I’d like to find one about medicine…sort of an ‘on doctoring’ type thing.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks and take care,
Jeff
What if you step outside the box and look for a completely different sort of book? How about if you look at his library (if you’ve stayed at his house) and try to pick up on another interest of his? A good public librarian can then help you pick up something nifty.
I would recommend gift certificates to his favorite restaurant for he and his family to enjoy.
The other thing I’d definitely suggest is a handwritten letter tell him how much his support meant to you and how you look up to him. This is the kind of thing people keep for years and take out now and again and treasure.
I concur with the suggestion of writing the letter–these things are really important to people when they get them.
Since he’s a family physician who loves books, you might consider a donation to
http://www.reachoutandread.org/
in his name. (A group that gives out books to kids via pediatrician’s offices.) But, aside from that, perhaps if he likes poetry a William Carlos Williams volume would be good. I’m a little downmarket from that personally–I never end up reading poetry even if I think I would like it–but WCW was a family doc who wrote a lot of poetry about Paterson, NJ, in part as seen from the eyes of a family doc.
for instance,
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/williams/9063
The other standard authors might also apply:
Atul Gawande
Oliver Sacks
Perri Klass
Abraham Verghese
and so on
cheers
joe
Oliver Sachs…THAT’S the name I was trying to remember the other day. 
Thanks all of y’all for the great suggestions. The thing I don’t think I included in my first post is that I’ve known this guy for a long time. He and I were both involved with the EMS system at our college and knew each other through them. He wrote me nice letter of recommendation to get into medical school.
I’ll certainly write the letter and I really liked the idea of going after other interests. He is a big fan of naval history and literature so I ended up getting him “Rough Medicine: Surgeons at Sea in the Age of Sail” by Joan Druett. It’s about the lives of 11 surgeons on different whaling ships in the early 1800s.
Thanks again for all the advice!
Take care,
Jeff
In addition to what Joe said about WCW, there is a collection of Williams’ short stories called, I think, “The Doctor Stories.” It’s all prose.
Or maybe a book on a subject outside of medicine?
Of course a letter is a good idea too!
Ok, I am stupid! I didn’t read all of the LAST post before I posted myself. So you already got a book… sounds great!
Duh… I gotta read a little more myself, looks like.
O.k. I’m a little late getting on this thread…but if you had not already bought a book and you know he likes to read, there’s always book gift certificates to Borders, Amazon.com, etc. Gift certificates to Borders is on my Christmas/birthday list every year! I love to read.
Love,
Stacy
Quote:
Howdy y’all!
I’m about to wrap up my family medicine clerkship that I’m doing with an old friend as my faculty (another of the perks of being an older medical student). He has been a great teacher and a wonderful host (it’s an away rotation for me and he and his family have let me stay with them).
Anyway, I’d like to get him a thank you gift and am looking for just the right one. He enjoys books and I’d like to find one about medicine…sort of an ‘on doctoring’ type thing.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks and take care,
Jeff
Hey Jeff,
There are some great books out on Civil War Medicine. I found them facinating (especially the amputations). He might love a couple of these (well-illustrated of course). There are also some good writings by Ambrose Pare too.
Natalie
Jeff,
A well written, from the heart thank you letter + a book… maybe try Blackwell’s Rare Books. They almost always have something great in medical history or some such.
Congrats & good luck!
Since you mentioned he’s a fan of naval fiction – I’d like to suggest the Patrick O’Brian Aubry/Maturin novels. He may already know about them, but if not, he’ll be so excited when he starts reading them. My husband is a big fan of naval fiction, I tend to read more science-geek stuff, but last year we traded “formative books and must-reads” and I was “stuck” reading a 20+ book naval series … but much to my surprise I loved them! Maturin, one of the two main characters, is a physician and naturalist (sort of a Linnaeus or Darwin-ish type) Sadly, the recent movie Master and Commander focused on Aubry, the captain – and neglected Maturin.
Quote:
Since you mentioned he’s a fan of naval fiction – I’d like to suggest the Patrick O’Brian Aubry/Maturin novels.
Funny, it was during a discussion of these books that I found out he liked naval medicine stuff. Thanks for the suggestion.
Natalie, you’ll get a kick out of this (but probably already know it). He carries the title Fire Surgeon at the fire department where he is medical director. He explained the tradition of this comes from back when there was a distinct difference between physicians and surgeons, the first being those who went to what passed for medical school then and the second those who were handy with a saw.
Since we’re talking about books, he gave me one from the mid 60s called “Intern” by the annonymous Doctor X. It is a journal type account of his intern year, sort of like House of God but earlier and not as cynical.
Here’s the Amazon link for Intern
Take care,
Jeff