Table Of Content
Basch survives the rotation with Jo by claiming to perform numerous tests and treatments on the "gomers" while doing nothing to treat them. These patients again do well, and Basch's reputation as an excellent intern is maintained. By the end of the book, it turns out that the psychiatry resident, Cohen, has inspired most of the year's group of interns—as well as two well-spoken policemen, Gilheeney and Quick—to pursue a career in psychiatry.
About The House of God
Dr. Roy Basch is an intelligent but naive former Rhodes Scholar and BMS ("Best Medical School")-educated intern ('tern') working in a hospital called the House of God after having completed his medical studies at BMS. Basch is poorly prepared for the grueling hours and the sudden responsibilities with limited guidance from senior attending physicians. He begins the year on a rotation supervised by an enigmatic and iconoclastic senior resident who goes by the name "The Fat Man". The Fat Man teaches him that the only way to keep patients in good health and to survive psychologically is to break the rules. The Fat Man provides his interns with wisdom such as his own "Laws of the House of God".
The House of God
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Throughout The House of God, Shem uses satire to call attention to deficits in the medical training system and what he sees as American health care’s immoral reliance on capitalist principles to provide care for patients. Roy rotates through four different wards in the hospital, spending approximately three months in each. He faces his own fears, disillusionment, and sorrows even as he gains medical confidence, but for much of the book he struggles to acknowledge and process these emotions.
Summary and Study Guide
Basch becomes more and more emotionally unstable until his friends force him to attend a mime performance by Marcel Marceau, where he has an experience of catharsis and helps him recover his emotional stability. A 2019 short essay by Shem[2] and an accompanying online documentary[3] document the origins of the book and the characters upon which it is based. A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The terrible year convinces most of the interns to receive psychiatric help themselves. The book ends with Basch and Berry vacationing in France before he begins his psychiatry residency, which is how the book begins as well; the entire book is a flashback. Basch is convinced that he could not have gotten through the year without Berry, and he asks her to marry him.
One of his teachings is that in the House of God, most of the diagnostic procedures, treatments, and medications received by the patients known as "gomers" (see Glossary, below) actually harm these patients instead of helping them. Basch becomes convinced of the accuracy of the Fat Man's advice and begins to follow it. Because he follows the Fat Man's advice and does nothing to the "gomers", they remain in good health. Therefore, his team is recognized as one of the best in the hospital and he is recognized as an excellent intern by everyone even though he is breaking the rules. The House of God follows medical intern Roy Basch and his fellow interns as they enter their medical career. They spend a year at a hospital called the House of God under the supervision of more experienced resident doctors, most notably a man called the Fat Man and a woman named Jo.
During that time, their assumptions about practicing medicine are challenged as they battle fear, disgust, exhaustion, bureaucratic inanity, despair, and grief. The Fat Man serves as a crucial character for Roy as he progresses through the year, helping him understand how to deliver good medical care within the confines of the American health care system. Despite everything he has learned about being a medical doctor, Roy decides to take a year off after his internship and then to become a psychiatrist.
Laws of the House of God
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During the course of the novel, working in the hospital takes a psychological toll on Basch. He has adulterous trysts with various nurses and social service workers (nicknamed the "Sociable Cervix"), and his relationship with his girlfriend Berry suffers. Basch secretly euthanizes a patient called Saul the leukemic tailor, whose illness had gone into remission but was back in the hospital in incredible pain and begging for death.
Characters
To cope with these feelings, he and the other interns, all men, turn to drinking, prescribing themselves medications, and sex with the hospital’s female staff. Over time, Roy begins to drift from his serious girlfriend, Berry, who is a clinical psychologist. Although she becomes frustrated with Roy’s inability to articulate and cope with his emotions—and also learns of his dalliances—she stays with him and eventually helps him overcome those challenges. Roy is then supervised by a more conventional resident named Jo who—unlike the Fat Man—follows the rules, but unknowingly hurts the "gomers" by doing so.
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