Samuel Shem is a novelist, playwright, activist, Rhodes Scholar, professor in medical humanities at NYU School of Medicine, and a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. Shem's new novel, Our Hospital, is the fourth and probable last novel of The Healing Quartet, spanning fifty years of American medicine. It started with The House of God, then Mount Misery, next Man's 4th Best Hospital, and now Our Hospital.
His novel The House of God, listed as Number 2 in Publishers Weekly's compilation of The Best Satires of All Time, follows Don Quixote at Number 1 and Catch-22 at Number 3. He can be reached on his websites, Sam Shem, Man's 4th Best Hospital, Samuel Shem: Conversations, Events, and Book Talk, and Samuel Shem.
The Spirit of the Place earned him two national awards for Best Literary Novel in 2008 and 2009. Alongside his wife, Dr. Janet Surrey, he coauthored the award-winning Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, centered on the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. Additionally, he penned the novel The Buddha's Wife and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men.
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Join Samuel Shem, a renowned novelist, playwright, activist, Rhodes Scholar, and professor in medical humanities at NYU School of Medicine. We’ll dive into his latest novel, Our Hospital, which marks the culmination of The Healing Quartet, spanning …
Samuel Shem on 50 years of American medicine [PODCAST]
An excerpt from Our Hospital.
Kush Kare Hospital in Columbia, New York, was the flagship of Kush Kare Private Equity Inc., a for-profit chain of hospitals across America. A for-profit that was listed on a lot of lucrative trading routes. Clearly its workings were murky—maybe not equity at all. A clever …
Battling COVID chaos and recruiting doctors
Forty-two years ago, when I had finally finished the seven revisions of my first novel, The House of God, my editor said, “Why don’t you add a glossary and a list of The Laws of the House of God.” Writing the Laws, I hardly needed to refer to the text; they just flowed out. The Laws became common parlance, not only tacked up in on-call rooms but even, recently, listed …
The laws of The House of God and Man’s 4th Best Hospital
An excerpt from Man’s 4th Best Hospital, Now available in paperback from Penguin/Berkley.
And in the Fat Man Clinic, what about billing?
We would do it ourselves on our screens. Using HEAL, the EHR or Electronic ‘Health’ Record system that BUDDIES had installed in Man’s 4th Best and its other hospitals …
Orientation to HEAL: the 4th best electronic medical record
Years and years ago, I wrote a novel called The House of God, based largely on my experiences as an intern at what was then known as Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. At its core, the book was about the injustice in medical training.
A lot has changed in medicine in the ensuing 40-plus years, not all of it for the good. In fact, all of us — doctors, nurses, patients, hospitals …
The evolution of the “doctor visit”
An excerpt from Man’s 4th Best Hospital.
“Why am I here?” the Fat Man was saying to us, his team gathered for the first time around in his new public clinic leaning up against one of the soaring buildings of Man’s 4th. “And why are you? One day …
We’re not trying to survive, but to humanize
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