Grey’s Anatomy meets Scrubs in this brilliant debut novel about a young doctor’s struggle to survive residency, love, and life. Having spent the last twenty-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her dreams. But after a disastrous first day, she’s ready to quit. Disgruntled patients, sleep deprivation, and her … patients, sleep deprivation, and her duty to be the “perfect Indian daughter” have her questioning her future as a doctor.
Enter chief resident Ethan Cantor. He’s everything Norah aspires to be: respected by the attending physicians, calm during emergencies, and charismatic with his patients. And as he morphs from Norah’s mentor to something more, it seems her luck is finally changing.
But when a fatal medical mistake is made, pulling Norah into a cover-up, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect the secret. What if “doing no harm” means putting herself at risk?
more
3.5 Stars
Not sure how I feel about this story.
On one hand, I like to see growth in characters through, and by the end of the story, and Norah Kapadia did evolve. Albeit, for me, it was lukewarm.
On the other hand, for someone who graduated with honors at the top of her med school class, Norah always seemed lukewarm. It would have been nice to see some of the confidence that helped her get the Philadelphia General internship throughout the story.
While doctors “react” to the physical/mental health issues of patients by diagnosis and treatment, reactionary was how Norah lived her life. To her family, her culture, her coworkers. Even her decision to go into medicine was to get closer to and understand her workaholic pediatrician father who died in a car accident when she was young.
But for me, Norah’s biggest faux pas was her reactions to her own assumptions. Norah was not the cause of some of the situations she found herself in, but her reactions made them worse. People around her played roles in her life while she had no active role. Had she been more present, things would have gone differently with Meryl, Ethan, Gabe, and maybe even Stuart.
To be fair, Norah admits to being non-confrontational and a bit of a doormat, and this only leads to her being overruled by family and coworkers and bullied into doing things she doesn’t want to.
Norah never speaks ill of her desi heritage, but readily admits the traditions are not for her. She wants more than an arranged marriage with a rich husband, however, instead of being a firm conviction, it’s a recurring theme her family makes fun of and disrespects. When Norah finds her spine and speaks up, it’s out of anger, over-the-top, and at the wrong time.
However, when Norah decides to follow her conscious regardless of the consequences, I applaud her. I have a problem with her timeliness, but even in that, I must give her credit for finally being true to herself.
Though Norah’s journey is cautionary, it is a transparent gaze into the hospital hierarchy of interns, residents, and attending physicians.
And it’s not a good look when career aspirations are put ahead of patient lives.
But The White Coat Diaries is a good look past the medical profession into the personalities and motivations of future doctors and their mentors, and what… and who they’re willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals.
Enjoy!
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Meet Norah Kapadia, new to the resident rotation at Philadelphia General Hospital. Norah’s dream has been to enter into the medical field, following her late father’s footsteps as a well-known and respected pediatrician. But her first day isn’t so promising. So far, she’s had a needle stick, and I won’t even tell you what happens to the code blue patient. Norah finds herself hiding in the supply closet, wondering if she has made the biggest mistake of her life.
Norah struggles with starting her career and dealing with patients, always conscious of her oath to do no harm. Or is she? What happens when a fatal error occurs, and ethics flies out the window? And can she manage to balance her duties and responsibilities of being a daughter, sister and friend with a schedule that involves an occasional night of rest? Oh, and love may have finally found her.
Sinha’s writing is witty, wryly humorous and heartfelt in all the right places. The book is definitely character-driven rather than plot-driven. Norah is someone you root for, even if she doesn’t always make the best choices. While I will say that I would have preferred a different ending, it was still a great book. If you were a fan of St. Elsewhere, ER and Grey’s Anatomy, then this is the book for you!
https://candysplanet.wordpress.com/
Norah Kapadia has just started her first year as a medical intern at Philadelphia General Hospital. Norah, who is more used to keeping her nose in a book than interacting with people, is thrust into a high-intensity, high-stress job that will impact the next three years of her life. She’ll learn what it means to hold someone else’s life in her hands. But will she be able to shoulder that type of responsibility?
I think the blurb is very apt with the Grey’s Anatomy comparisons especially early years Grey’s. I could feel the pressure and the stress of the fast-paced world of the hospital seeping out of the pages as I read. I think the picture painted of what it takes to work in the healthcare industry and the toll it puts upon doctors, nurses, and patients is deftly felt. As are the cracks in the system and where some small, seemingly routine kind of determination could wind up being life threatening. I felt with each diagnosis the precarious balance in which lives were resting. I thought that Madi Sinha really did a great job of conveying these feelings throughout.
The thing is, I wanted to like Norah more than I actually did. She’s not a bad person, but in order for her become successful at her job – at least in her mind – I felt like there was a lack of empathy for those she treated. In fact, many of the characters seemed to be this way and it was slightly off-putting. I know, or I figure I know, that when you’re in the medical profession there has to be a divide between how one feels about a person and being able to medically treat them. I mean come on, we’ve seen the TV storylines that showcase doctors who are too emotionally involved. But I wanted to see something from Norah.
It’s true that at the beginning of the book Norah enters this new world more on the naive side. Yes, she has all the capabilities to be a doctor, she’s intelligent and she’s able to think on her feet, but in order to achieve all that she has, she’s kind of closed herself off in the box. So when she’s out on her own and she’s in this super stressful situation, I think she ends up overcompensating in order to cope with all the stress around her at the hospital.
It includes, but not limited to, making some very questionable choices on the job. It was difficult to read some of these circumstances because, as a reader viewing Norah’s life from the outside, you can easily pinpoint the myriad of places where she’s going wrong. And I think it’s a natural thing to want the main protagonist of the book to come out on top, but as the story progresses Norah kind of spirals. And the impact this had for me overall is that I didn’t feel there was enough of a balance showing the “after” side. I wanted to see more of Norah learning from her experiences, but I think the book takes us up to the edge, almost showing, then cuts off.
It does this similarly in the way we see Norah interacting with her family and friends. Her family that doesn’t entirely understand her commitment to medicine as opposed to traditional Indian culture. I thought the clashes that rise up between Norah (a woman of science) and her sister-in-law (a woman of tradition) is very interesting, but like other aspects of the story, it just doesn’t go far enough to make a statement one way or another.
Maybe the true message is that there is not definitive answer. We all just do the best that we’re able to do with what we have and with what we’ve been taught. But still in Norah’s case, as a reader, I wanted to know that she really understood where her mistakes have led her, and seeing her become better, but I just don’t know if she does at the end.