Hospitals are often places of high drama; you only have to look to many medical television shows and movies to see how the high-stakes environment of hospitals creates a rich stage for exploring the most serious issues in life. However, the hospital environment is also often a place of fun, where bizarre or laughable things occur and colorful characters abound. The humorous aspect of clinical practice is just as entertaining as its serious side, and it is the subject of a new fiction book by family medicine clinical associate professor Kyle Bradford Jones, MD.
The novel, titled HOSPITAL! A Medical Satire of Unhealthy Proportions was released late December, and has already garnered critical appreciation, with Hollywood Book Reviews noting that Dr. Jones’s “is a witty word-slinger, in the stream of consciousness jokey tradition of David Foster Wallace, Larry David, and, yes, Hunter S. Thompson." The book follows the exploits of Dr. Camus, whose poor attitude and worse clinical practice creates endless headaches for his boss, colleagues, and patients. The longsuffering CEO of Dr. Camus’s hospital eventually prescribes hypnotism to change the wayward medic’s antisocial ways—but will the cure cause more chaos than the disease? Readers of Dr. Jones’s novel will delight in the witty way he examines the inconsistencies and absurdities of medical care.
"There's no sense of irony in a hospital," says Dr. Jones, but those who read his book will have access to a hilarious story set in a serious place.HOSPITAL! A Medical Satire of Unhealthy Proportions is published by Black Rose Writing. It is available on Amazon and can be ordered through local independent bookstores.
