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    Weekends at Bellevue
    Weekends at Bellevue
    Weekends at Bellevue
    Audiobook10 hours

    Weekends at Bellevue

    Written by Julie Holland

    Narrated by Julie Holland

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Julie Holland thought she knew what crazy was. Then she came to Bellevue. For nine eventful years, Dr. Holland was the weekend physician in charge of Bellevue's psychiatric emergency room. Deciding who gets locked up and who gets talked down would be an awesome responsibility for most people. For her, it was just another day at the office...

    In an absorbing memoir laced with humor, Holland provides an unvarnished look at life in the Psych ER, recounting stories from her vast case file that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving. As Holland comes to understand, the degree to which someone can lose his or her mind is infinite, and each patient's pain leaves a mark on her as well--as does the cancer battle of a fellow doctor who is both her best friend and her most trusted mentor.

    Writing with uncommon candor about her life both inside and outside the hospital, Holland supplies a fascinating glimpse into the inner lives of doctors, struggling to maintain perspective in a world where sanity is in the eye of the beholder.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateOct 6, 2009
    ISBN9780061967399
    Weekends at Bellevue
    Author

    Julie Holland

    Julie Holland, M.D., is a psychiatrist who specializes in psychopharmacology and a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine. An expert on street drugs and intoxication states, she was the attending psychiatrist in the Psych ER at Bellevue Hospital from 1996 to 2005 and regularly appears on the Today Show. The editor of The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis and Ecstasy: The Complete Guide and the author of the bestselling Weekends at Bellevue, she lives in the Hudson Valley.

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    Reviews for Weekends at Bellevue

    3.5/5

    223 ratings49 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book was somewhat uneven but utterly readable. I even had my sci-fi-only-reading boyfriend pick it up and then keep coming back until he had finished it even before I did. The subject matter alone is pretty interesting, but it's matched with a biting, creative, and unpredictable writing style that really infuses the personality of the author into the work. I do feel like the title/subtitle and synopsis sell the work as more of a series of stories about the hospital and its workings, patients, etc., but it ends up feeling like it's half about the author's personal life; this is not really an issue in and of itself, but I went in expecting to read more about psychiatry and various psychiatric emergency situations in a more nonfiction sort of setting, something not so memoir-y. I would hesitate to recommend the book to friends that prefer less emotional biographical content because of this, and it probably would have put me off the book initially if I'd known, but that is in the realm of personal preference and the bottom line is that I ultimately enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Having heard so much about Bellevue, these stories were exactly what I expected. Well told and woven together nicely. Very enjoyable!
    • 4/5
      The author recounts memorable events and odd stories from her nine years working mental health unit at Bellevue hospital. A fixture of New York City life, Bellevue is one of the only places indigent people in need of medical attention can come and receive it with no questions asked. Dr. Holland worked weekends for nine years dealing with drunks, drug addicts and schizophrenics. She analyzed attempted suicides and those having active delusions to decide which ones were an immediate danger to themselves or others. Though a stressful and often horrifying job, it provided her with a lifetime of stories, wisdom, and mystery.
    • 2/5
      The author is a narcissist who seemed to complain about her chosen career. The sections about Bellevue (the reason for reading) were informative and heart wrenching.
    • 4/5
      Weekends at Bellevue is a memoir by a psychiatrist who was in charge of the psych. emergency room at the (in)famous hopsital on weekends for about nine years. For the first two hundred pages, this woman comes across as a hard-edged, almost non-compassionate, fairly beastly type, but the last hundred pages reveal Dr. Holland as someone who has tried to insulate herself from the incredible pain endured by the patiesn who wind up in the psychiatric e.r. In one of the most moving and revealing passages in the book, Dr. Holland discusses how we all fear going mad, and how that fear makes us shun and/or condemn the mentally ill. That chapter alone would make the book worthwhile. While there wasn't quite as much psych. information as I had hoped to find, there's plenty to learn, and some rough humor here and there as well.I hope that Dr. Holland will write another book, as she is interesting to get to know, and not afraid of portraying herself in a most unflattering light. Well worth reading if you are at all interested in mental health issues.
    • 3/5
      For nine years, Julie Holland worked in the psychiatric emergency room at Bellevue Hospital. In her time there, she saw everything from garden-variety depression to serial killers and would-be prophets; she was stalked and punched in the face. And being faced with her patients' mental problems forced her to come to terms with her own issues.Not only were the stories in this book compelling, I found myself just as interested in the author herself. Her adjustment to working in the hospital, her relationship with another doctor, and the way she evolved from the beginning of her time at Bellevue to the end, all drew me in. And her stories of the patients were fascinating - there was so much variety in the stories, and they gave me an insight into a world I don't know much about.The problem I had with the book was that it often felt scattered and rushed. In a way, this was good, because it mirrored the atmosphere of the author's time working at the hospital. But it made it hard to get fully absorbed in the book, because a part of me was always wondering what exactly was going on - before I'd had a chance to process one anecdote, the book was on to the next one. Despite this, though, I still found the book interesting to read.
    • 4/5
      A sometimes terrifying, sometimes heartbreakingly sad look into the little known world of acute psychiatric illness. Dr. Julie Holland's smart-ass "tom-boy" exterior is her defense against dissolving into a puddle of compassion as she's faced with the relentless problems of her patients and co-workers. In addition to providing a unique perspective on Bellevue, this memoir raises important questions about our care of the seriously mentally ill -- an issue little touched on in the turmoil over health care reform in general.
    • 5/5
      I didn’t exactly love it but I valued its intro to the reality of the mind of a member of a profession I’ve previously held in contempt for its inability to truly help patients to heal. I’ve despised the drugs they give that only alter the mind and attenuate the consciousness of the patient to the point where they become dependent on its mind altering effects.

      The story was filled with the savagery of big city life for those unfortunate folks whose real needs go totally unheard and unmet. I saw clearly in this doctor’s wise perspective on its shortcomings how, now with the advent of Functional meds becoming available, all of psychiatry will eventually be unneeded in its present format, and all psych ERs will—perhaps 25 years from now—be only microbiome checkup points with immediate referrals to their family Functional physicians.

      I recently learned about the microbiome we each have within us that can go out of whack at a very early age if antibiotics are used frequently in a child’s earliest years. As the child physically matures, the lack of a healthy microbiome bodes emotional troubles as hormones change in teen years. By the mid to late teens, it manifests into the “inevitability” of the present “mystery” of late-teen mental illness mentioned by the author, who fears her children may enter that state, while she now anticipates with dread and horror that she will feel helpless to do anything but drug them.

      Future Functional medicine, now in its infancy, will by then be able to alert all children’s parents to immediately take community classes where, in perhaps only one class + one followup, each child’s microbiome will, with diet change and proper parental care, soon begin to return to its original health. This alone will deeply cause each child’s regrowth of their healthy gut’s “rain forest” (i.e., microbiome) that will prevent the child ever feeling a future hunger for drugs, or ever developing mental illness as they approach the age of full responsibility!

      I’m speaking of an ideal that, with new mindsets toward natural healing, will be rapidly adapted to in all young parents’ homes—once psychopharmacology is no longer being promoted as the only solution by a corrupt FDA. In fact, as the corruption in all areas of medicine is undone by ongoing and revolutionary means not yet revealed, the tragic, harrowing lives of severely unbalanced patients will begin to heal as the news gets out that microbiomes are the true source of most ills and all good health.

      The outdated concepts of this doctor’s chosen profession will be replaced by these same psychiatrists gaining new knowledge to present all their patients with testing to reveal which natural and dietary solutions will be used to restore their minds to the native state they were forced, by unintentional maltreatment, to leave behind them many years prior.

      The old psychiatry spelled out clearly in this well-clarified story will soon become as unnecessary and dangerous to our microbiome as are highly-processed foods filled with GMO corn in its myriad disguises. As long as people “feel well” and are not laid low by severe illness, their poor dietary habits will persist. But when cancers naturally heal when all chemical treatments are bypassed in favor of healing the patients’ guts first and foremost, word will spread and this scourge of radiation and poison-usage (in a vicious violation of the Hippocratic Oath that each physician once swore to uphold) will soon cease to be thought of by cancer specialists as their “treatment of choice”.

      This book will turn an intelligent reader’s mind toward newer alternative ways to actually HEAL this type of chaotic and hazardous hospital emergency-entry from overwhelming and “hardening” the physicians’ innate and open-hearted goodness, a plight made clear by the author. Psychiatrists are at risk here over time of becoming inured to the endless, inevitable visits of people wanting to die —to end the horror of the mental prison in which mental patients never actually chose to enter but who have innocently accepted it as their lot as their only method available for living out the remainder of their entire lives! Both M.D. and patient bear the sheer hopelessness of this never-ending cycle!

      I hope many will approach this book with firm questions uppermost in their hearts: Why must suicides continue? What REALLY has to change in all our attitudes toward mental illness and crime’s moral deviancy? Who will first demand as their right the emotional and spiritual freedom from mental ills? Who will lead the way, choosing freedom once and for all from carrying within them a desecrated microbiome “rain forest”, and then opting for extensive treatment by Functional Medicine to the end of proving that “mental illness” is not at all “incurable”, but instead only a symptom of a very sick gut?

      Who will be the first to finally break free from the deeply hidden sense of shame that all psych patients needlessly carry in their hearts? Who will choose to blatantly disregard the cautions of M.D.’s who tell the pioneering adventurers who choose to address their “victimhood” head-on that “they are too out of touch with medical reality to understand that there is no cure and their movement to break free is based on hallucinations”?

      I urge the courageous few readers who suffer needlessly as victims of mental pain to step forward with certainty into a future of evolving into great health, and along the way discovering the “whole person” they really are—and are not! Introduce yourself to any Functional physicians and ask them to help you finally heal your microbiome.
    • 4/5
      Dr. Julie Holland is a psychiatrist and psychopharmacologist who worked in the psychiatric ER at New York's Bellevue Hospital from 1996 through 2005.This memoir wasn't exactly the collection of wild stories the cover blurb seemed to promise, and it also wasn't quite the nuanced and thoughtful exploration of the treatment of mental illness that I was hoping for (although it does certainly have some of the latter). What it was, mostly, was, well, a memoir. Holland spends a lot of time talking about herself, her relationships of various kinds with other doctors, her own psychological issues, and the insights about herself she's taken from psychotherapy. Part of me can't help but find some of that a little self-absorbed or over-share-y, although I do appreciate her ability to be honest about her own faults, and those personal ruminations do both tie into the larger issues of mental health support and illuminate some of what it's like to do this particular job.Whether it's quite what I expected/wanted to read or not, I did at least find this interesting as a glimpse into this world, with all its medical and emotional complexities. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's also pretty depressing, since it's crystal clear throughout that the systems we have in place for dealing with mental health crises and substance abuse problems are pathetically, horrifically inadequate (something Dr. Holland definitely appreciates, even if she's mostly fairly low-key about addressing it).
    • 2/5
      I'm not sure why I thought this would be a good read. Maybe the title snared me as to expect quirkiness and such from the nature of those who drift into the Psyche ward of Bellevue hospital. I was disappointed. Though there are a few intriguing cases mostly the book is about Dr. Holland's life experiences. That said the title might will have been, "Dr. Holland, A Life."We are taken through her experiences coming out of school and into the fray of a large hospital. But the book relates more to her coming of age, getting married, finding a mentor, having children, and a huge political squabble for power and control with one of her colleagues.Interspersed she does talk a bit about how our healthcare system when dealing with the many in need of mental care is lacking. Also briefly referring to the private practice she developed and how prescribing the medications that drive psychopharmacology I found interesting. The entire book though did not have much to offer in any way.
    • 1/5
      This is a memoir of one doctor’s nine years spent on the night shift at the psych E.R.

      I majored in psychology and really wanted to like this book. I’ve read other memoirs about “becoming a doctor” and was expecting interesting insights and some colorful and entertaining “patient profiles” (altered to protect identities, of course). But this memoir isn’t about Bellevue and the many patients who come there. It’s about Holland.

      I cannot remember when I’ve read a memoir that is more self-centered. There is a little bit of interesting information regarding Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room, but not enough to redeem it. The jacket blurbs applaud her candor; I found her inappropriate behavior disturbing for the doctor in charge of a busy city psych E.R. (in one episode she stops at a cocktail party before going to work the night shift; in another she describes her efforts to have sex with as many residents as possible). I suppose it’s a good thing that she chose to become a psychopharmacologist (i.e. she does not treat patients with psychotherapy but with drugs); she certainly doesn’t seem to have enough insight to be successful at the traditional psychotherapy techniques.

      If it weren’t for the fact that the book satisfied a challenge for a game I’m playing I would have abandoned it.
    • 3/5
      This could have been a much more interesting book if Dr Holland had focused on more of her really challenging and interesting patients instead of on her personal growth as a medical professional. I very weary of her therapy and was very angry at her for her response to her good friend Lucy's death. The story is more about pharmacology in dealing with mental health than dealing with individuals. I skipped through the last chapters as the story was tiresome.Also, to the editor, why were some chapters so short, even though they were connected to the next one... ?
    • 4/5
      I loved the TV show ER, watched nearly every episode in its fifteen year run, especially Season 7 when they introduced the character of Kim Legaspi, and for an episode here and there would introduce a more psychiatrically driven plot point.That's why I picked up this book. Because it tells one of the real stories of the Psych ER at Bellevue. And, of course, like always, this real life stuff was vastly more interesting than even what they put on TV.The stories that Holland told in the book ran the gamut, some were heartbreaking, others were terrifying, and most of them were just plain weird. And yet the stories weren't really my favorite part of the book, but it was how Holland put the stories in context, sitting alongside her own therapy and her own life (sing and family). It gave a richness to the narrative, and much like a fictional story, I found myself caring for those Holland cared for and being pissed at those she got annoyed with. She did something not many non-fiction writers do successfully, made me care about the real people in her book.Add to that the fact that it was a very well paced and organized book even though its narrative wasn't perfectly linear, I never thought of putting it down until I read page 308. A definite four stars.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed Weekends at Bellevue although I was surprised that it focused more on Dr. Holland and her personal experience & therapy vs. that of her patients. It was still interesting to read about how she had to harden herself emotionally, how important it is for psych doctors to have their own therapy so that they don't project onto their patients. The bits of information about the patient side is more generic. While she covers a few out-of-the-norm cases, you are left with the impression that many of their day-to-day patients, regardless of age, sex, or class, have had similarly traumatic experiences that brought them to this breaking point. The author briefly mentions how the mentally ill are treated so differently here in the US, vs. other countries where they are more integrated into society and cared for by not only their families but neighbors and friends in the community as well. I found myself wishing that there was more information on this topic and whether this might change anytime soon or not.
    • 3/5
      While I really enjoyed the beginning of the book, I felt like I was slogging through a lot of it. I was looking forward to reading about the weird admissions and how a psych ER worked (or not, at times), but instead got bogged down in hospital politics and pettiness. Some on Holland's part, some on the other doctors' parts. I really appreciated her compassion with those who needed it and her toughness with those who probably didn't expect it. I liked Dr. Holland quite a bit, but wanted more madness (for lack of a better term).
    • 4/5
      I've noticed a lot of readers have given this book a negative review because they didn't like the author. I admit the woman has her share of flaws. But her honesty in writing about them is a big part of what makes this book so interesting.Julie Holland does not claim perfection. She struggles with her emerging roll as a psychiatrist in the admissions section of one of the busiest psychiatric hospitals. She acknowledges she did not always handle patients as compassionately as she should have. And, as she shares some of the stories of her nights at Bellevue, we see why it's sometimes necessary for doctors to harden themselves against the constant heartbreak of mental illness.Holland also shares bits of her personal journey, because, without that, the book would be nothing more than anecdotes of a steady stream of patients. We have to get to know the author on a personal level, in order to fully understand her experiences at Bellevue.We don't get to know any one patient well. This book isn't about specific patients. Instead, this is about the system in general, our treatment of the mentally ill and the difficulties doctors have in navigating the system. Overall, I found this book a compelling read.
    • 4/5
      My cousin picked this book up and told me how interesting it sounded, so I decided to pick up a copy, too. What could be more fun than reading about a doctor in a loony bin? As it turns out, nothing could be more fun! I liked this memoir very much. Holland struck the perfect combination of on-the-job antics with her personal life triumphs and struggles. Holland also shed light on the plight of the mentally ill and how they are cared for and treated within the medical and legal system.This was a very different kind of memoir for me to read and I loved it! I definitely recommend this book to memoir fans and anyone who is looking for an engaging and different read.
    • 2/5
      She's so matter-of-fact about her job, the patients became tedious.
    • 2/5
      The shift from descriptions of work and patients to more of an autobiography wasn't quite what I was looking for. I was more interested in Bellevue and ER mental health care delivery rather than in Julie Holland per se, but she's interesting for what that's worth, and sure, I guess it is true that she would be a hard person to separate from her work. Maybe that's the point. But just not quite what I hoped for.
    • 4/5
      I had been looking for this book ever since hearing an interview with the author on NPR's Fresh Air many months ago. The read was worth the extended wait. The author details her experiences during her 9 years working as a weekend attending physician in charge of the psychiatric emergency room at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. She explains the difficulties of diagnosing the symptoms presented by the broad range of patients that line the waiting room during her shifts, whether voluntarily or by being brought in by the cops or EMS. Do they pose a legitimate threat to themselves or to others, warranting admission to the psych ward? Can they safely be released? Or are they faking their symptoms in pursuit of softer accommodations than a shelter or a jail cell.She talks about the stress of dealing with workplace politics. And she talks about the frustration of being involved only in diagnosing patients rather than treating them.As the book progresses, she matures. She marries, has children, ands opens a limited private practice. A therapist helps her to work though her issues and come to the conclusion that she can no longer comfortably wear the tough chick facade that she felt made her invulnerable during her early years at Bellevue.After nine years, she resigns her position. She reports that her life is more fulfilling afterward . . . but that she misses the rush that working Bellevue gave her.
    • 4/5
      This is my first medical memoir and I enjoyed it immensely. For me, it was educational, as well as entertaining. The world behind the automatic doors of Bellevue hospital is exposed to us thru the eyes and experiences of Julie Holland, M.D. Julie exposes the nitty, gritty, funny, strange, and just plain sad cases that walk in the door either by choice or in cuffs for her to assist, interview, or diagnose. Among the many attempted suicides, there is a lady that walked across the bridge carrying two bags of her own feces, the man that swore he had a razor blade up his rear, women that swear they are having babies, but are not even pregnant, and violent offenders from Rikers that threaten bodily harm to themselves and those around them. Rarily is there a dull moment at Bellevue! The book is not only about Bellevue tho. Dr. Holland also talks about her personal life and emotional issues she has. She talks about her anger and her own therapy and what she hopes to gain from it, her big step into motherhood, her relationships with her co workers, and dealing with her friend's death. Obviously, I liked this book. Why am I giving it four stars instead of five? There were some details I felt the book could have done without. Namely the author's sexual escapades during her "early days" or residency and her ongoing issues with one of her bosses, Danny. And Sometimes.. (I want to stress this word here...) the book gave me the impression that Dr. Holland did not always care about her patients. There were moments that it seemed she was just in a hurry to get them out of her hospital and out from under her care. It has been a fun read tho. I want to add a note here for the more old fashioned crowd... There is some foul language. If you are easily offended by four letter words popping up here and there, it may not be for you.
    • 4/5
      In this admittedly disjointed memoir, Holland reveals just what it takes to run the weekend shift at one of America's most famous mental hospitals for almost a decade. Not one to sugarcoat reality, Holland paints a disturbing picture of our current mental healthcare priorities, and quite frankly of herself. I'll admit there were plenty of aspects of her life and personality which I found off-putting, but the raw honesty she displays is a testament to her commitment. I'm not sure I'd choose Holland as a friend or as a doctor, but suspect it was her ability to compartmentalize that made it possible for her to do her job and do it fairly well for 9 years.Ultimately, I would have preferred a slightly more cohesive narrative structure; the book reads like a series of unrelated vignettes until close to the end. That said, this is certainly a book worth reading if you are in the mental health field. Though I could wish for a more sympathetic narrator, I suspect that Holland's rather grim portrayal of herself reflects the real truth about those battling on the front lines of the mental heathcare system- too little time, too few beds, and too little follow-up must wear down even the most optimistic of practitioners.
    • 3/5
      It took me a while to "get into" this book. I was not hooked until after the 2nd chapter. I thought the book was going to focus more on the patients, and less on the author. However Holland does weave an interesting tale of her week-ends working with psych patients while trying to maintain her own sanity. Pretty decent read.
    • 3/5
      Julie Holland spent nine years in the psychiatric ER of New York's most famous public hospital, Bellevue. In that time she saw thousands of the city's most severely mentally ill, in moments of stress, often under arrest. The stories about these abandoned people and how they are dealt with is fascinating. Less fascinating is the long look at Dr. Holland's own life, which cannot hope to measure up to those she serves. The focus on her own life detracts and dilutes what could have been a powerful book, with much too much time spent on explaining how much her boss sucked and how helpful therapy was to her.
    • 4/5
      Julie Holland spent nine years as a psychiatric doctor working the weekend night shift at Bellevue Hospital and this medical memoir is her recounting of those long years. She discusses some of the patients she saw, the therapy she herself underwent, her close friendship with a fellow doctor, and clashes with other members of the staff. It is fascinating to see what goes on behind the locked doors at Bellevue but it is equally interesting to see what Holland learned about herself during her nine years there. Obviously she detailed the more colorful patients and incidents as more mundane evenings probably wouldn't have made for particularly entrancing reading, at least long term. But in her reactions to patients and the medical system as it currently stands, she lets the reader into more of her own life than expected.Holland pulls no punches and doesn't try to sugarcoat her confrontational style or hide her anger management challenges or minimize the abrasive, uncaring stances she was capable of taking during her stretch at Bellevue. While this doesn't make her a terribly sympathetic narrator, it does offer the perspective that she's a reliable and honest one. She doesn't mock the patients and while she learned to ignore the fact that she would be seeing these people over and over again until they finally fell through the cracks in the psychiatric medical system, she does have an air of caring about her which she tries very hard to tap into in her own therapy sessions. The odd assortment of people she saw, from the perfectly sane and lucid to the criminally insane were interesting to read about but fairly heartbreaking as well, given their likely outcomes in life.The writing here is choppy and sometimes disjointed and her tale doesn't hold together as well as it could. The glossary in the back was helpful in terms of the plentiful acronyms and medical slang that Holland used to mimic the language of Bellevue's ER. But this same specialized language made it more difficult to fully sink into the book until quite far into the narrative. Some of the shifts between Holland's personal life and her public service in the ER were abrupt and roughly integrated but the fusing of the two topics was necessary to see that Holland wasn't just a cocky, uncaring doctor working to shove people through her ER as fast as possible. Instead, her own struggles show that she is human and working to conquer her foibles just as so many of the rest of us are. Julie Holland seems to have had something to prove in writing this book and while I don't know if she's proved it to herself or her intended audience, this was ultimately an interesting read for those of us outside the psychiatric community. People with an interest in psychiatry and or medical memoirs will generally enjoy this book.
    • 3/5
      I would say this is an uneven read but was ultimately interesting. I'm always fascinated ti read about the medical profession and gain insight into their "daily life" and how they diagnose and make decisions. That was one of the reasons I was so frustrated by this book - I felt it overglossed diagnoses and lacked the satisfaction of knowing the outcomes. Perhaps it is the nature of an emergency room. I had hoped to find more depth in the book, but I found it to be a relatively shallow look at the practice of psychiatry. I'm not certain it was intentional, but the author showed herself in a fairly unsympathetic and unflattering light. Yet despite these criticisms, I found the book interesting but kept wishing for more.
    • 2/5
      I was expecting a fast paced, intimate look into a renowned institution. Instead this was a simpering, meandering look into the mind of an ill-adjusted doctor. The narratives from her therapy almost forced me into therapy. She should focus more on her patients and less on herself.
    • 4/5
      I received this as an ARC from Early Reviewers and I'm so glad that I did. The jargon, at times, was difficult to get a handle of (especially in the beginning - the short speak) but once you got used to that, it lived up to my anticipation. I highly recommend it to anyone who is fascinated by the psych field!
    • 4/5
      Weekends at Bellevue is the story of Julie Holland’s nine years as the weekend attending in Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room -- almost without a doubt the most famous such facility in the United States.While the reader gets glimpses into the lives of patients -- Holland recognizes the desire for voyeurism, and admits it was part of what drew her to psychiatry in the first place -- the book is at heart a memoir of her development as a doctor. This is a strength, I believe, There are other very good books of case studies and meditations on the doctor-patient relationship. This work seeks to fill another niche. It is Holland’s personal story, as she attempts to negotiate hospital politics, personal tragedy and to develop compassion for her patients.As a reader, I felt she generally tried to write her story as it happened. There are points of the book where she doesn’t come across as particularly sympathetic. At times, when she described clashes with co-workers, I found myself thinking that I understood their point of view more than hers. Dr. Holland offers no final answers and isn't particularly introspective. These last two quibbles limit her audience quite a bit. Still, I think overall this is a unique addition to medical memoir bookshelf. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone interested in doctors’ lives and how a hospital operates.
    • 5/5
      What a great book! This memoir is filled with Dr. Holland’s often dramatic encounters with patients while in the psych ward at Bellevue. It was interesting to see how psychiatrists make diagnoses and decide whether to admit or release patients. But more than that, I just liked “getting to know” the author, hearing her philosophies, sympathizing with her struggles. She wrote candidly about being in New York City during 9/11, her friendships, single life, marriage, children, and her triumphs and failures at work. I highly recommend reading this book.