Monday Mornings: A Novel

I couldn't wait to read this since I have been a fan of Sanjay Gupta's for a long time. I've been both an ICU and an ER RN since 1973 and have worked in both large inner city teaching hospitals and small community hospitals and I can tell you that the situations Dr Gupta's describes in this book just don't happen and his portrayal is unprofessional....My husband is a physician, my daughter is a physician, my brother in law is a physician, it's the family business...... The nurses don't want to take care of a gang banger who shot his grandmother? Seriously? Most RN's I know view the patient as just that - their patient that they need to care for...If you don't take care of gang bangers in an inner city hospital you better look for another job...The Director of Nursing had to come and "talk" to the ICU nurses so that they would care for the patient? Really?...And the ER doctor got a transplant patient admitted upstairs without the neurologist seeing the patient? ER doctors don't have admitting privileges (their malpractice companies frown on that) and the patient would have had to have admitting orders...... And There are so many medical mistakes in this book that I can only think he had a ghost writer....He obviously wrote the descriptions on neuro surgery,which he knows, but the medical mistakes just scream GHOST WRITER... .Seriously disappointed and may have to stop following Dr Gupta on Twitter.......Can't forgive you for portraying the nurses as unprofessional........

Had a chance to read an advance copy of the book, and literally could not put it down!! Excellent character development, lots of drama and a surprise ending made Monday Mornings a great read from beginning to end! Definitely recommend for anyone who enjoys a good medical drama...

Medical malpractice is a major problem in this country but Dr. Gupta does absolutely nothing to help the problem. Does he really think that putting a series of stories into a fictional collection of garbage will help anything? Dr. Gupta should write a book about what is really wrong with the medical industry because he has the power to drive real change if he wanted to. He has inside information that could make a difference but instead, he writes this book? Give me a break and don't waste my time. What he has put in this book does nothing but further infuriate me.

I am a practicing physician and enjoy a good medical story. This book is awful. It is unrealistic in its portrayals of hospital life. The author seems to enjoy periodically tossing out medical jargon that a non-medical reader will have trouble understanding. Worst of all, it is simply poorly written and whoever edited it should lose their job. This book is a prime example of how a story written by a well known MD can sell copies for no other reason than the author's notoriety. Two better books with medical connections are "The House of God" and " The Year It Finally Happened."

I was so disappointed in this book. I thought maybe even though it was a fictional novel there would be some inside insight to what happens on Monday morning reviews, instead it was completely unrealistic account of what happens in a real life situations. From the moment the EMT's burst through the door with the IV bag swinging wildly on the pole... what? ... too a cowboy doctor making a diagnosis from across the room and shoving another doctor aside... I mean... what? I had confidence in Gupta's physician skills before I read the book. Yes it is a fiction novel but still I wonder has he ever been in an ER or hospital?

Dr. Gupta's first novel follows the lines of five surgeons pushing their limits, sometimes possibly too far, in their efforts to help patients. Bad patient outcomes are followed by the requirement to confront one's colleagues before a Monday morning Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conference. It's intended purpose - to learn from mistakes, thereby improving patient care.

It is impossible to criticize the skills and dedication that individuals such as Dr. Gupta bring to American health care. I've read prior non-fiction books by Dr. Gupta, seen him on TV, and been very impressed by him. However, I'm not at all enthralled by this book. The reality depicted in his 'Monday Mornings' M&M conferences is far, far closer to fiction than fact. America's health care system neither rewards nor encourages excellence. Poor results usually earn as much income as excellent results, M&M conferences far more often than not turn a blind eye to egregious violations of medicine's 'Do no harm' component of the Hippocratic Oath, and expenditures are grossly inflated by providers attempting to simply maximize their own earnings.

Thus, Dr. Gupta's well-written medical thriller unwittingly contributes to the undeserved mystique given physicians and other health care providers, delaying much needed system overhaul. (Actually, the only reason I picked up the book was that I assumed it was 'non-fiction.)

I like Sanjay Gupta as a reporter, and I wanted to like him as a novelist. Alas, this book didn't have enough plot to satisfy me. It felt to me to be a compilation of subplots with no over-arcing story. And the characterizations seemed a little wanting, possibly because there were so many characters and none of them could be called the central one. Characters changed, yes, but the things that brought about their changes seemed tossed in because something was needed--nothing I found myself believing in. Overall, I found the book pallid.

Carolyn Banks

I'm an avid fiction reader (30-plus books in 2011) and couldn't put Dr. Gupta's book down. Monday Mornings has the perfect balance of giving the reader an inside view into the world of neurosurgery while also capturing the personal stories of the doctors and nurses that are helping to save lives everyday. As with any great novel, Monday Mornings makes you a passenger on the roller coaster of emotions and life events that takes place with its characters. Except in this case, the characters are the best neurosurgeons in the world who must confront their own fears and limitations while also pushing the boundaries of medicine. Dr. Gupta takes some of the most pressured heroes of society, and makes them human. All of this makes for a must-read.

This book was a really poor example of medical fiction. The characters are actually just stereotypes that talk and one of them is a thinly disguised rip-off of The Fat Man from House of God. The characters' inner monologues feel artificial but the dialog is even worse. As the reader, we are told that the characters' are feeling certain ways but you have to take the author's word on that because you couldn't tell otherwise. Many of the situations which occur and serve to move the plot forward would never actually happen. Other events, like aggressive brain cancer or marital infidelity, are resolved with no discussion of how someone would actually deal with those situations and their consequences.
Some of the reviews have compared this novel favorably to House of God or Hot Lights, Cold Steel. That seems insulting to those books. There are a lot of great medical fiction and medical memoirs out there. This is not one of them. Skip it.

I am a nurse anesthetist and I love schlock medical tv shows. I watched every St. Elsewhere, E.R., Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice. This is horrible! There's no way this person has ever practiced medicine, although I know Dr. Gupta is a physician. First 10 minutes- the person that wrecked her car with no brake marks would be assumed to be impaired- either heart attack/stroke or alcohol/drugs. No EMT would come into an ER and say "suicide by car" . Ugh. And, by the way, m&ms are never a place you point a finger at a person. Lawyers are able to depose anyone in the room.
I didn't think anything could be as bad as HawthoRN