What do you think?
Rate this book
34 Patients: What Becoming a Doctor Taught Me About Health, Hope and Humanity
We ask so much of our doctors. To heal. To trust. To care. To listen. To tell a man he'll die tomorrow. To help a man who doesn't want to live. To look into a parent's panicked eyes as their daughter fights for breath. To watch a 103-year-old woman slip away. Doctors know our deepest secrets, our private worries and our most vulnerable moments. In this breathtaking memoir of patients he has helped, lost, and those who have changed him forever, Dr Tom Templeton weaves a profound and moving portrait of humanity, asking us to treat all with compassion.
368 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 2021
45 people are currently reading
568 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
December 15, 2022
"Nancy was lonely and wanted to be in hospital. And the virus, which trails a pandemic of loneliness in its wake but is always keen to meet new people, was waiting there with open arms." The writing is a pleasure in itself. I would read anything by this author. I've just finished it. My eyes prickled with tears, it's one of the most perfect endings of a book I have ever read. RTC
The title exactly describes the book. It's very profound. This is not a book about cases, it's about people who suffered terribly from ailments. Sometimes there is no resolution to either the ailment or the patient's predicament.
The writing is beautiful. I don't like lyrical writing generally, and this book has very little indeed, but when it does have, it is short, perfectly placed and illuminating. I didn't want this book to end. I didn't want to have read it, so I could read it fresh all over again. With age I keep forgetting books and starting them again only to realise that I've read it. If this happens with this book, I hope I don't remember.
The title exactly describes the book. It's very profound. This is not a book about cases, it's about people who suffered terribly from ailments. Sometimes there is no resolution to either the ailment or the patient's predicament.
The writing is beautiful. I don't like lyrical writing generally, and this book has very little indeed, but when it does have, it is short, perfectly placed and illuminating. I didn't want this book to end. I didn't want to have read it, so I could read it fresh all over again. With age I keep forgetting books and starting them again only to realise that I've read it. If this happens with this book, I hope I don't remember.
June 8, 2021
Phew! Not often a book moves you to tears in the first few pages and continues to do so for the next 300 or so. I’ve always had the greatest respect for the medical profession (I’ve been the lucky recipient of their help on more than one occasion) but this book left me humbled, grateful and profoundly affected. 34 Patients is a moving and sometimes uplifting memoir of a doctor who cares. The blurb accompanying the book says, “Through stories of the patients he has helped and lost, and those who have changed him forever, Dr Tom Templeton weaves a profound and moving portrait of humanity….” It is an amazing memoir and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It will stay with me that’s for sure. 5 stars from me. I may have just finished my favourite book of 2021.
October 3, 2022
34 Patients was an Audible Audio selection read by the author. It covers a period of internship when he worked in a hospital and was in collaboration with other doctors and their supervisors. That type of work doesn't allow long term follow-up in the cases they see; we are privy to a window into a patient's short interaction with the doctor when they enter the hospital. A variety of physical ailments, genetic disorders, and injuries are represented, and the focus is more about dealing with the patient as a person than with the medical diagnosis and treatment. There's a lot of doctor/patient dialog as he gets to the crux of the problem with each one, and helps them understand what's happening, and such a number appear to have some mental issues going on that I mistakenly believed he was working toward a psychiatry specialty. He was actually trying to focus on geriatrics, but in the end opted for GP, and it seems a good choice because he seemed to genuinely care about the people he saw. Each case is a short story, commonly without a resolution/ending, often a mystery. Some were incredibly sad. Great book.
September 24, 2021
(2.75) Templeton, formerly a journalist, retrained as a doctor at age 30. Now a decade into his medical career, he reflects on cases that are representative of his time on hospital wards, taking us from childbirth to old age via anonymized vignettes. The most effective anecdotes tend to be longer, allowing for a full story arc. A couple of characters recur across chapters, as if to counterbalance the ones who got away. In contrast to many medical memoirs, this one eschews the personal. Partly for that reason, it lacks a concrete sense of time or place, and the fictionalized contents can feel generic. Disease details are relegated to an appendix rather than integrated; the emphasis on the literary makes one wonder whether Templeton might branch out into fiction in the future.
(My full review is in the September 24th issue of the Times Literary Supplement. Non-subscribers can read an excerpt here.)
(My full review is in the September 24th issue of the Times Literary Supplement. Non-subscribers can read an excerpt here.)
October 30, 2021
Another medic talking about his experiences. Some interesting stories, many about mental health, the author also ventures into the start of the pandemic. Notable were the instances of abuses of the NHS. I’m sure Nye Bevan hadn’t envisaged it’s precious resources being dwindled away by time wasters and Saturday night syndrome.
January 11, 2024
big memoir gal
June 27, 2022
Have a box of tissues ready! As someone fresh out of medical school, I recommend this book to everyone, but especially to those in the medical field or those planning to enter it. The author is honest about the realities of medicine, he’s a deep thinker and has retained his empathy, something that unfortunately appears to dwindle with time in the field. On top of that he almost made me want to become a GP with the last paragraph.. almost ;)
July 30, 2022
2.5 ⭐️
August 7, 2023
A collection of clinical vignets told by a once journalist now doctor; the stories are moving, vivid and told from a somewhat distant but nonetheless compassionate viewpoint; first half is excellent, the second less so.
March 1, 2023
Excellent. A bunch of boring medical anecdotes brought into life by a terrific writer and narrator. I.e. surprisingly enough not boring at all. And a beautiful voice too. Only issue: to short!
July 13, 2022
First i admit that read many doctor takes and i love the genre. The issue is that most of the doctors are not great writers. This book stands out as the doctor was a journalist and is actually VERY GOOD at writing!
All the stories had a meaning and an idea beyond describing an illness or a medical case. I must emphasize that it concentrated on people and not diseases. There is an interesting note about each illness in the end though.
The stories are not connected in a broad sense, but together create an unique experience and this book will be one to remember for me.
I'm writing this review because the book seems underrated relatively to it's quality. Go on, give it a try, it's amazing.
All the stories had a meaning and an idea beyond describing an illness or a medical case. I must emphasize that it concentrated on people and not diseases. There is an interesting note about each illness in the end though.
The stories are not connected in a broad sense, but together create an unique experience and this book will be one to remember for me.
I'm writing this review because the book seems underrated relatively to it's quality. Go on, give it a try, it's amazing.
October 6, 2022
He seems like one of the doctors that actually cares. Most doctors come across as arrogant, non caring types so it made a nice change. As a former journalist, he can also write. Shows the varied cases that GPs face every day
February 7, 2025
Tom Templeton has written a moving memoir about his life when working in an NHS hospital. He starts out by telling us that he volunteered for the NHS as a holiday job when he was eighteen.
This nevertheless didn't entice him into medicine, and after university he went on to pursue a career he loved, in journalism. He worked for The Observer, one of our most respected national papers - but his story didn't end there. One day he "glanced down an alleyway and saw a paramedic trying to resuscitate a dead man." It was a time where there had been a lot of suffering, in his family and amongst friends - and this was a pivotal moment for him. He wanted to do something to help alleviate the suffering. And so, at the age of thirty, he went to medical school.
The patients described in this book are from when he was a hospital doctor. They are brief pictures of his connection with various people. Sometimes just during one day, at other times a bit longer.
The descriptions only mention medical details very briefly - but at the end of the book, also in chronological order, you will find in depth descriptions of what his patients are experiencing medically. I found this to be a great way of handling that information, rather than having large tracts of medical details clogging up the stories.
The people have problems which are sometimes physical, sometimes psychological and sometimes a mixture of both. Throughout the book Templeton's skills as a physician are clear, but also his caring, compassion and vulnerability. Not all the stories have happy outcomes.
The story that moved me most was that about a young boy with Prader-Willi Syndrome. His mother had died of cancer, leaving his father to bring him up.
Maybe because I spent much of my youth unsuccessfully yo-yo-ing from diet to diet, this particularly resonated with me. That poor child, and the poor father, having to act as gatekeeper to the larder.
He mentions an occasion when he thought a patient might be faking his symptoms, so he almost failed to refer him for a CT scan. Fortunately he double checked with the consultant on duty who said to get the scan done anyway. It showed bad bleeding in the brain, which thankfully could then be treated.
One patient asks him that if working in A & E hasn't got him down.
I thought this book was outstanding. Not surprisingly it left me with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude for my imperfect but reasonable health.
"Until that summer I had always thought of the NHS as a bland, antiseptic institution. Up till then it had meant the drab waiting room at the local GP surgery I scarcely visited. This holiday job opened my eyes to what I now know is pulsating, variegated hive of pain, lunacy, death, sorrow, redemption and recovery, and when a stone crashes into the waters of a life many of the ripples wash on to its shores."
This nevertheless didn't entice him into medicine, and after university he went on to pursue a career he loved, in journalism. He worked for The Observer, one of our most respected national papers - but his story didn't end there. One day he "glanced down an alleyway and saw a paramedic trying to resuscitate a dead man." It was a time where there had been a lot of suffering, in his family and amongst friends - and this was a pivotal moment for him. He wanted to do something to help alleviate the suffering. And so, at the age of thirty, he went to medical school.
The patients described in this book are from when he was a hospital doctor. They are brief pictures of his connection with various people. Sometimes just during one day, at other times a bit longer.
The descriptions only mention medical details very briefly - but at the end of the book, also in chronological order, you will find in depth descriptions of what his patients are experiencing medically. I found this to be a great way of handling that information, rather than having large tracts of medical details clogging up the stories.
The people have problems which are sometimes physical, sometimes psychological and sometimes a mixture of both. Throughout the book Templeton's skills as a physician are clear, but also his caring, compassion and vulnerability. Not all the stories have happy outcomes.
The story that moved me most was that about a young boy with Prader-Willi Syndrome. His mother had died of cancer, leaving his father to bring him up.
Somewhere in the intricate dance of Johnny's genes a misstep has take place. Now an almond-sized glad in his brain, a few centimetres behind his eyes, is pumping out chemicals that are giving him the stomach-gnawing, ignorable sensation of hunger until he has eaten five times as many calories as he needs. Five bananas instead of one. Ten biscuits instead of two. Fifteen fish fingers instead of three. From the moment he wakes up to the moment he falls asleep, he will feel the magnificently evolved, sledgehammer cravings of hunger. He is destined to be ravenous for the rest of his life."
Maybe because I spent much of my youth unsuccessfully yo-yo-ing from diet to diet, this particularly resonated with me. That poor child, and the poor father, having to act as gatekeeper to the larder.
He mentions an occasion when he thought a patient might be faking his symptoms, so he almost failed to refer him for a CT scan. Fortunately he double checked with the consultant on duty who said to get the scan done anyway. It showed bad bleeding in the brain, which thankfully could then be treated.
One patient asks him that if working in A & E hasn't got him down.
" I guess you must see a lot of misery here" says Tariq.
He replies "The opposite actually, within the misery we see people's drive to live, to get whole, to enjoy life again."
I thought this book was outstanding. Not surprisingly it left me with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude for my imperfect but reasonable health.
July 31, 2022
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
This was an easy peasy 5 stars
This book is written in the chronological order of the patients age (pre cradle to grave if you like) that Dr Tom Templeton has met rather than his sequential career journey and so the book does flit around his experience as a Doctor and various locations from differing wards, A&E and community. I liked this layout.
It’s different to other medical memoir books with the emphasis being on the patient, a glimpse into their life and how it may relate to their symptoms rather than the disease taking centre stage as can be typical with a lot of books of this genre. Also don’t expect the humour of Adam Kaye , or a bash at policies and politics (little and big p ) around staffing, waiting times etc . This isn’t a party political manifesto.
What there is though are a series of chapters dedicated to each or sometimes a group of individuals he’s met along the course of his career from med student to GP. Compassionate accounts of the way disease impacts a life, their families, communities and vice versa how life and society affects disease. Both mental and physical. Mixed in with all of this is the palpable breath holding shortness of time in a variety of settings when he and other doctors are trying to elicit a history and symptoms from someone (which is not always easy) and the resulting possible diagnosis against a backdrop of time urgency - both externally and sometimes form the disease itself.
Dr Tom Templeton used to be a journalist and hence why it’s probably written very well.
It’s one of my favourite books this year.
This was an easy peasy 5 stars
This book is written in the chronological order of the patients age (pre cradle to grave if you like) that Dr Tom Templeton has met rather than his sequential career journey and so the book does flit around his experience as a Doctor and various locations from differing wards, A&E and community. I liked this layout.
It’s different to other medical memoir books with the emphasis being on the patient, a glimpse into their life and how it may relate to their symptoms rather than the disease taking centre stage as can be typical with a lot of books of this genre. Also don’t expect the humour of Adam Kaye , or a bash at policies and politics (little and big p ) around staffing, waiting times etc . This isn’t a party political manifesto.
What there is though are a series of chapters dedicated to each or sometimes a group of individuals he’s met along the course of his career from med student to GP. Compassionate accounts of the way disease impacts a life, their families, communities and vice versa how life and society affects disease. Both mental and physical. Mixed in with all of this is the palpable breath holding shortness of time in a variety of settings when he and other doctors are trying to elicit a history and symptoms from someone (which is not always easy) and the resulting possible diagnosis against a backdrop of time urgency - both externally and sometimes form the disease itself.
Dr Tom Templeton used to be a journalist and hence why it’s probably written very well.
It’s one of my favourite books this year.
June 8, 2023
I found this absorbing and really easy to read, a good example of an all-rounder medical memoir. On a side note, I did detect and dislike the author’s insensitivity and unkindness towards those he calls “malingerers” — malingerers are malicious, bad actors, actively seeking to rob others of attention, time and resources. ‘Malingerers’ is a very strong word to describe people who are obsessively albeit unnecessarily worried about their health. Despite the author’s opinion, those people *are* unwell… mentally. And it’s hurtful that the NHS so often regards those individuals with such disdain. The NHS loves to pump out perturbing TV adverts saying stuff like “If you’re worried something is wrong with you… go and get checked out… it will probably be nothing but if it’s not nothing then you’ll die… so just go and speak to a doctor” — I know the target audience is negligent men in their 60s ignoring their malignant prostates, but in reality these messages are far-reaching and unfortunately have the power to feed an already unbearable feedback loop of endless anxiety — the conclusion of which are anguished trips to A&E. If those horrendously worried people can’t get a GP appointment or are carelessly fobbed off, what other choice do they have than to attend A&E in the hope that someone there can help them? It’s a last resort most of the time and it’s not fair to neglect them under the pretence that they’re malingering. It’s to the NHS’ own detriment that they do so.
June 17, 2025
A thoroughly engaging book written by somebody who knows how to write. I only found out after finishing it that Tom used to be a journalist, and I was not surprised: he knows how to add detail to a vignette to engage the reader and bring the stories to life. There is a thoughtfulness to these vignettes that is unusual in this type of book. It’s not really a book about medical cases, it’s a book about human life. It shows time and time again how the way we live and how our body reacts are intimately connected. Insofar as there is a medical component to the book, the point is that modern medicine is both powerful and powerless. It can do amazing things but it can’t address the underlying problems of so many medical and psychiatric issues. I wish he was my GP.
September 7, 2022
This is described as 'memoir', but each patient story comes across as too pat, all ends tied: there is always a beginning, a middle, and an end, with characters sometimes reappearing in an ensuing story to show us what happened to them - unlike in real life. There are also pages and pages of dialogue which, unless recorded by the author at the time, must have been 'recreated' or 'reimagined' (in other words, made up). As, in addition, the author acknowledges that names and identifying details have been completely changed, this all adds up to a degree of fictionalization which belies the 'memoir' label. Just call it fiction.
July 23, 2023
This was not the sort of book I would normally read, but I was gripped by the stories of the patients. At first I felt frustrated that I couldn’t follow their progress after they left hospital, but then I realised that this was the point of the stories, that the doctor also remembered those patients and wondered what happened to them. Clever that the patients were presented in age order, from a newborn to a man at the end of life, and so the doctor could be either a consultant or new qualified at any time. Interesting that he went on to become a GP, where he enjoyed the continuity of looking after the same patients. A positive view of the NHS in difficult times.
June 8, 2024
Really loved this. I thought it was incredibly well written and really powerful. The format of lots of smaller stories, some that ultimately intersect, worked really really well and I felt meant that all the vignettes had just the right amount of detail and focus. I loved This Is Going To Hurt and after watching the show, this was a great read too continue the hyperfocus! Very different to Adam Kay’s book, but equally as enjoyable in my opinion.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2025
One of my favourite books read about being a doctor, especially enjoyed the fact he went into medicine in his 30s like all sensible.
Stories ranged from the action packed, the Swedish girl with anaphylaxis to the desperately sad, probably the most was the still born. Some really interesting ones the psychiatric diseases, how normal people succumb to mental illnesses.
There are also some funny ones such as Kevin and his fly allergy.
Stories ranged from the action packed, the Swedish girl with anaphylaxis to the desperately sad, probably the most was the still born. Some really interesting ones the psychiatric diseases, how normal people succumb to mental illnesses.
There are also some funny ones such as Kevin and his fly allergy.
December 5, 2022
Audible listen for me. Probably a 3.5 star (goodreads you need to start doing half stars!) , not my favourite medical memoir, a lot of stories left without endings but I suppose that’s kind of the point of his book, the immediate patient care. I prefer the humour and personal experiences shared by other healthcare professionals in medical memoirs.
July 25, 2021
This book took me longer than most to read as I had to break it into chunks. It has real tear jerking moments and I found myself at times feeling very emotional. Definitely worth a read as it makes you think about mortality and how our time on this planet is limited.
January 6, 2023
Following the advance of medical technologies, everywhere is facing the same problem of shortage of healthcare resources. We really need to rethink whether it is a must to extend life unnecessarily and whether it is also the wish of patients too.
December 2, 2023
I actually quite enjoyed this but why didn’t he put the end notes as foot notes, to give each chapter context? A lot of this could be removed and only the actual medical stuff remain (ie no politics) but it would have made for better flow.
I’d recommend but it was’t exactly a happy read.
I’d recommend but it was’t exactly a happy read.
June 20, 2024
This book was extremely well written and gave a very good insight into what being a doctor is truly like. These stories were equally heartwarming and at times heartbreaking but overall a very interesting read.
July 8, 2024
Loved it. It follows a GP through his apprentice period along with some of the people and diseases he experienced along the way. Told in his own words. Epilogue tells you what the illnesses were and references where to get help outside of traditional sources.
July 7, 2021
Brilliantly written and a fascinating book.
March 2, 2022
I loved the different stories in this book, uplifting and thought provoking and some made me a little emotional.
April 3, 2022
Listened to this on Audible.
Fascinating insight into the varied patients a junior doctor dealt with in a specific time.
Fascinating insight into the varied patients a junior doctor dealt with in a specific time.
April 6, 2022
Amazing book
This book put me through many emotions and is so well written. Highly recommend reading it. Hard not to get involved with the stories.
This book put me through many emotions and is so well written. Highly recommend reading it. Hard not to get involved with the stories.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews