Alpha Docs

June 1, 2015
Muñoz recounts his year as a cardiology fellow at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University Hospital, in this memoir of his search for more experience and wisdom—and his place in medicine. He finds that the fellowship is “all about focus” as he applies medical skills that are “lofty, technological, and primitive” in rotations that include cardiac intensive care and procedures such as heart transplants. Muñoz struggles with the dilemma of a profession that grants the “power of life and death over fellow human beings” and witnesses the “injustice” of patients who “seem to have nine unearned lives” while others “cling to one.” The new doctor also realizes that families “invest their confidence in our medical knowledge, but evaluate us on our ability to connect.” But after solving the mystery of how a change in medication nearly killed one ailing patient, he concludes that it has been a good year. “Does it ever end, the learning and training and practicing and teaching and experiences?” Muñoz asks. If it did, he notes, it would mean “we’d found the answers or given in to disease.” Muñoz begins to find his niche in the medical world, and his journey will inspire doctors in training and patients alike. Agent: David Black, David Black Literary Agency.

May 15, 2015
From physician Munoz, a chronicle of becoming a doctor at the extremely demanding Johns Hopkins cardiology program. After an introduction, the opening section of this memoir of a year of fellowship rotations at Johns Hopkins hospital-a fellowship is a three-to-four-year, post-residency position overseeing residents while being overseen by an attending specialist-is ill-advised. The author drones on about his pedigree-Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Johns Hopkins again-the odds of becoming a Hopkins Fellow (1 in 10,000), and the Navy SEAL-like training involved (the book's title speaks volumes), and it exudes smug superiority. But forgive these mercifully few pages to get a quite satisfying immersion into what medical specialization requires. Munoz thankfully shifts from embarrassingly tedious to humanely sympathetic as he chronicles how he had to acquire a measure of expertise in what can be described as stations of the cardiology cross: consultation, nuclear medicine, heart failure and transplantation, intensive care, electrophysiology, echocardiography, and more. The author is honest enough to admit which tasks bored him, which opened him up to the big picture-how a heart transplant is not just about blood type, but "habits, foibles, fears"-which attending doctors he admired and why ("Dr. Franklin's ability to listen and connect with his patients also means that they are often extremely well informed"), or why not to jump to fast conclusions. Munoz has nothing new to say about some old questions-"Why are we allowed to make these calls over people's fates? Who are we to decide? It's fair. It's not fair. Someone has to do it. No one should do it"-and he pays no more than lip service to the critical quality of empathy. He shines, however, in explaining a wide variety of conditions, and there is polish to the patient vignettes, giving them deeply human appeal. Munoz offers little turning of new ground in what has become a fertile genre, but the book is enjoyably idiosyncratic and elucidative.

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July 1, 2015

Munoz, aided by frequent cowriter Dale, provides a firsthand account of his training as a cardiologist at the elite Johns Hopkins Hospital. He takes readers on a tour of the various aspects of cardiology: nuclear medicine, electrophysiology, heart failure and transplantation, intensive care, echocardiography, and preventive care. While explaining each of these, he also discusses how doctors are trained and the importance of good communication with both patients and other physicians. Along the way, he discovers which aspects of cardiology interest him and decides on a career path. This engaging book will interest those considering a career in medicine as well as readers who want to learn more about cardiology. VERDICT A solid choice for aspiring doctors and armchair practitioners.--Barbara Bibel, formerly Oakland P.L.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2015
In this heartfelt medical-education memoir, Munoz (with coauthor Dale) recounts his cardiology-fellowship training at Baltimore's renowned Johns Hopkins Hospital. The elite program is an exhilarating, wrenching, breathtaking, brutal ordeal, at once ego-making and ego-breaking, heroic and humbling. Whew! He writes about the various clinical and technical rotations that constitute advanced cardiovascular education: interpreting nuclear stress-test scans and echocardiograms, practicing preventive cardiology, fathoming heart failure and heart transplantation, working in the cardiac intensive-care unit, getting up to speed on electrophysiology and irregular rhythms of the heart, and doing interventional procedures such as cardiac catheterizations and placing stents in coronary arteries. But beyond the science of medicine, Munoz learns much about the art of the profession. He finds ways to connect with patients, increasingly trusts his instinct, and discovers the blurred boundary between hope and hopeless. And in an affirmation both humorous and unsettling, he confesses, Another good day. I didn't kill anyone. A successful portrayal of just how hard it is, intellectually, emotionally, and physically, to train as a physician specialist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)