Suggested Readings for Residents

So You Want to Be a Surgeon... a Medical Student's Guide to Surgery Residencies: This popular guide to general surgery residency programs and the residency application process is an essential reference for both faculty advisors and medical students seeking postgraduate training in surgery. Unfortunately, it is no longer in print. In 2001, the American College of Surgeons created an online version of the book with the authors' permission. It now encompasses all surgical specialties.

Published by the Association of Women Surgeons and currently in its second edition, the Pocket Mentor is a manual for surgical interns and residents.

Core Surgical Texts

Note: This list doesn't imply an endorsement of the authors/companies.

• Sabiston Textbook of Surgery: The biological basis of modern surgical practice
• Mastery of Surgery (Fischer)
• Greenfield's Surgery: Scientific Principles and Practice
• Cameron’s Current Surgical Therapy
• Schwartz’s Principles of Surgery
• Operative Techniques in Surgery
• Clinical Scenarios in Surgery
• Zollinger's Atlas of Surgical Operations
• Surgical Recall
• Marino’s The ICU Book
• ATLS Manual for Trauma 

Perspectives on Health, Surgery, and the Practice of Medicine

• Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
• Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
• The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder
• The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine by Danielle Ofri
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman