This funny, candid memoir about the author's intern year at a New York hospital provides a scorchingly frank look at how doctors are made, taking readers into the critical care unit to see one burgeoning physician's journey from ineptitude to competence.

After his professional baseball career failed to launch, Matt McCarthy went to Harvard Medical School and on to a coveted residency slot in New York. But when he almost lost a patient on his first day after making what he believed to be a terrible error, he found himself facing the harsh reality of a new doctor's life—one in which even overachievers find themselves humbled, and in which med school training has little to offer in navigating the emotional rollercoaster of dealing with actual patients. Luckily for McCarthy, his second-year-resident adviser (whom he calls "Baio", owing to a resemblance to a Charles in Charge-era Scott Baio) was an offbeat genius, with a knack for breaking down the complicated process of treating patients. But neither doctor could offer much help to a patient named Barney, who had been living in the hospital while waiting for a new heart, and whom McCarthy slowly befriended over the course of the year in ways that changed his perception of what it means to be a physician.

Mixing the tense drama of ER with the screwball humor of Scrubs, McCarthy offers a window on to hospital life that dispenses with sanctimony and self-seriousness while emphasizing the black-comic paradox of becoming a doctor: How do you learn how to save lives in a job where there is no practice?  This "One L for doctors" will inspire and entertain physicians and patients alike.