Mentorship Matters November 2024: Books and mentorship skills
Culture & Inclusion
Photo from https://blog.daisie.com/5-tips-for-better-perspective-in-kids-books/
Reading non-medical literature provides an opportunity to gain external insights, enhance creativity, and improve critical thinking skills. Books can deepen empathy!
I asked some colleagues to provide me with a book recommendation (ideally a non-medical book that they think could be a nice resource to broaden perspective).
Here is a list of their “book prescriptions” (in no particular order):
Suggested by Dr.Kathryn Tinckam:“This book helps people truly welcome and learn from opinions different than their own. Rather than dualistic either-or approaches to solutions, this book supports tangible skills one can use to explore (and embrace?) opposing ideas and truly create new ones in a way that gets away from the stress and antagonism of 'arguing' one’s position.”
“The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business” by Clay Christensen
Suggested by Dr.Kathryn Tinckam (Kathryn was super into the idea and wanted to share a second amazing book): “This book is absolutely not about medicine. Which is to say, it is totally applicable in medicine! It’s a great book to challenge oneself to think about how we innovate - we always talk about innovation in our processes and technologies, but it is really difficult to meaningfully change things. This book has, I think, a lot of wisdom worth pondering as we face our biggest challenges in healthcare where innovation is foundational. Clay Christensen also DID write a specific healthcare book - The Innovator’s Prescription - but I would suggest the OG classic version as the must read first.”
“Nudge – The final edition” by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R Sunstein
Suggested by Dr.Kathryn Tinckam (…and a third incredible book):“This is the book that turned behavioral economics mainstream - read it and you too will find yourself seamlessly integrating phrases like “choice architecture” into casual conversation! If that isn’t incentive enough - this book helps us rethink the answers to “why didn’t X just simply DO Y” - to help ourselves and others make better decisions more easily and sustainably.”
“The Alienist” by Machado de Assis
Suggested by Dr. Caroline Kramer: “A very fun satiric novella written by a Brazilian writer. The story is about a psychiatrist-scientist who tries to determine who is crazy and who is not… he ended up admitting an entire city to a psychiatric hospital! This book is a genial short story about the concept of mental health/sanity, written with dark humour that questions societal norms.”
Suggested by Dr.Laura Targownik: “For fun, literally anything by Mary Roach” (I picked these three as the title sounded fun, but have not read yet).
“How to do Nothing – Resisting the Attention Economy” by Jenny Odell
Suggested by Dr. Ivan Silver (and previously suggested to him by Dr. Jolie Ringash): “It’s not a book about nothing, but a book that challenges us to resist the productivity race and to redirect our attention to heightened listening, reflection, curiosity and personal growth. It’s a great book for 'too busy' academic physicians.”
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
Suggested by Dr. Rodrigo Cavalcanti: “Interesting exploration of how human beings make decisions and suffer from biases from a Nobel prize winning author.”
Suggested by Dr. Moira Kapral:“I'm fortunate to be the frequent recipient of excellent books. Dave [Juurlink] always does a lot of research to find interesting books for me, and one of my favourites was "The Great Believers" by Rebecca Makkai, set during the AIDS epidemic, and a reminder of my residency training during those sad times.”
“Code Blues: When Medicine Becomes Murder”by Melissa Yi
Suggested by Dr. Moira Kapral: “I love a good medical mystery and Amy Yu got me started on a series written by a Canadian physician, Melissa Yi.”
Suggested by Dr. Moira Kapral:“Manav Vyas recently gave me "The Sympathizer" by Pulitzer Prize recipient Viet Thanh Nguyen; I'm only part way through it but it's great so far.” Moira also shared with me her addiction to the Libby app (https://libbyapp.com/interview/welcome#doYouHaveACard) – where you can have access to many titles for free using a Library Card at the Toronto Public Library.
Are you interested in brainstorming ideas relevant to our mentorship program?
