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American Association of Medical Colleges Career in Medicine page

lists more than 120 specialties and subspecialties in medicine -- a wide assortment of fields ranging from psychiatry to neurosurgery. From the breadth of diseases seen to the medical interventions made, every specialty is unique.

For this reason, clinical volunteering and shadowing can only provide a narrow glimpse of what physicians face. To supplement this knowledge,

medical school

applicants should consider reading one of the many medical memoirs written by physicians of all stripes to get a better understanding of medicine and the challenges faced by medical students, residents and attending doctors.

These medical memoirs often explore the personal and professional difficulties that physicians face through their calling. Here are five medical memoirs written by doctors that physician-hopefuls can add to their reading list.

"Intern: A Doctor's Initiation," by Dr. Sandeep Jauhar

. This book provides a compelling look into the physically and emotionally rigorous training process to become a physician.

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.]

Jauhar is a cardiologist and the director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He explores the intensity of the medical intern year -- the first year of one's training as a newly-minted doctor. He paints the stories of the patients he took care of and how the toil and struggle of his training end up shaking his worldview. Despite his misgivings during the training process, Jauhar details how he found strength in helping his patients and knowing that he was becoming a better physician.

"When Breath Becomes Air," by Dr. Paul Kalanithi.

Through this book, prospective medical students can glean insight into dealing with personal tribulations while still facing the long hours required to develop technical excellence in their surgical craft, and the litany of life-and-death decisions that patients and physicians must make.

Similar to Jauhar's memoir, Kalanithi chronicles the challenges associated with medical training. In this case, however, the author has an added tribulation of facing his mortality after being diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer in the last year of his residency. Dr. Kalanithi passed away at the age of 37 in 2014, and his book was published posthumously to great acclaim.

"My Own Country: A Doctor's Story," by Dr. Abraham Verghese.

Verghese's work is an important part of the patient advocacy conversation, detailing how compassion and empathy can uplift even the sickest of patients.

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.]

Currently a professor of Medicine-Operations at

the School of Medicine at Stanford University,

he paints the challenges and rewards of taking care of underserved patients in the mid-1980s as an infectious disease specialist in a small Appalachian town in Tennessee -- and how the nature of his work strained his relationship with his family. Verghese describes the diverse lives of patients afflicted with a mysterious disease later discovered as HIV/AIDS and the deep prejudice that they faced from their community and medical providers during the early years of the disease.

"Every Patient Tells a Story,"

by Dr. Lisa Sanders.

Before graduating from medical school at the age of 41, Sanders was a broadcast journalist, and she uses her keen observation skills to describe many of the biases and the errors that physicians make in their practice, to the detriment of patients in their care. Applicants should read this book to learn about the limitations of medical diagnosis and treatment and the overarching importance of listening to one's patient. She currently serves as an assistant clinical professor of internal medicine and education at the

School of Medicine at Yale University

.

"The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," by Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning book sheds light on the relationship between research and clinical practice and the professional and personal challenges of taking care of gravely ill patients.

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]

Mukherjee is currently an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology in

the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University

. As a principal investigator of his own research laboratory, Mukherjee depicts the historical progression of human understanding and perspective toward cancer and the interventions devised against it. Within this rich canvas, he weaves in his personal experience in taking care of patients as an oncologist.

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