Wider Reading for Medicine
Many applicants applying to medicine will have the GCSE grades, the A-level grade, the UCAT score and so on. But a factor that can make you stand out is by doing wider reading. Wider reading involves digging deeper into the medical world and developing your understand of the field of work as well as being able to gain an insight into how to react in certain situations. Wider reading is also a great part to include in your personal statement. It helps show that you have a genuine interest in medicine.
The NHS website posts lots of information on certain conditions and diseases that may be useful to read just to gain some general knowledge.
Some recommended books are:
Breaking & Mending by Joanna Cannon Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
Explores how it is to be old and die and how medicine has changed this.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh
Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
Breath Taking by Rachel Clarke
Aims to capture what it was really like inside the NHS in a time of pandemic. Gives an insight into the life of the NHS workers during the Covid Pandemic.
Fragile Lives by Professor Stephen Westaby
A book about a heart surgeon’s stories on life and death on the operating table. Westaby details some of his most remarkable and poignant cases – such as a baby who had suffered multiple heart attacks at six months old, a woman who lived the nightmare of locked-in syndrome and a man whose life was powered by a battery for eight years.
This Is Going To Hurt by Adam Kay
It focuses on the lives of a group of junior doctors working on an obstetrics and gynaecology ward in a National Health Service hospital. Also available as a film on BBC
