Monday, June 23, 2025

The Devil Wears Scrubs - Freida McFadden

   2013; 300 pages.  Book 1 (out of 2) in the “Dr. Jane McGill” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Medical Humor; On-the-Job Romance; Doctors & Hospitals.  Overall Rating: 8*/10.

 

    It’s July 1st, and Jane McGill’s first day at work!  She’s been hired as a medical intern at County Hospital, in Manhattan, New York.  She’s very excited!

 

    Her days at medical school have ended.  Now she’ll get to put into practice all the things she learned there.  She’ll be surrounded by doctors, nurses, other interns, and all sorts of medical professionals who she can learn from.  This internship will be a life-enriching experience.

 

    True, Jane’s has a lot to learn about the way things are done at County Hospital.  But she has no doubt her boss, Alyssa Morgan will show her the ropes.  And Jane’s a quick learner.

 

    And when this day’s over, she can go back to her apartment-suite and swap stories with her roommate, whoever she is.  Jane hasn’t met her yet.  The payoff in all this is that pretty soon patients and co-workers will be calling her something new.

 

    DOCTOR Jane McGill.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Devil Wears Scrubs is humorous look at the daily grind of working at a hospital.  Freida McFadden is quite qualified to write about such a setting; she’s a practicing physician in the greater Boston area.  Stylistically, this book reminds me of Coffee, Tea or Me, which I read recently (the review is here), and which gives similar treatment to the 1960s career as an airline stewardess.  The title also alludes to movie/book, The Devil Wears Prada, but I’ve neither read nor watched that one.

 

    The story is told in the first-person POV, Jane’s.  We tag along with her as she tries to cope with back-stabbing coworkers, psycho suite-mates, and way too many patients to properly attend to their health.  Each of the 33 chapters closes with a brief summary usually formatted in terms of the time Jane gets off duty that day, the hours she’s been awake, and the percent chance she has of quitting her job.

 

    Silliness abounds, mostly in Jane’s thoughts, of the snarky quips she thinks but prudently avoids saying out loud.  Yet underneath all this, the reader gets glimpses of what it’s like to work in a busy metropolitan hospital.  Working an “on call” shift can mean being there for as long as 30 hours straight.  Some patients are very skilled at faking excruciating pain in order to con an intern into prescribing pain meds such as Percocet for them.  My wife worked in the medical field, and assures me that both the 30-hour shifts and scamming for meds are common occurrences.

 

    If, like me, you don’t work in the medical field, then you’ll find the technical details both entertaining and informative.  I could relate to be echocardiogram scene; I get those twice a year.  But learning why the hospital elevators didn’t go all the way to the top floor where the “call rooms” are was a surprise to me, and to Jane as well.

 

    The storyline stops at a logical place, although there’s not much “building to a climax” involved.  There is a sequel (see below), but there’s a 10-year gap in the storyline between the two books.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.1*/5, based on 19,920 ratings and 995 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.45*/5, based on 63,920 ratings and 5,157 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    If there’s a seat available, there exists a very clear hierarchy of who may sit.  First, the attending gets to sit.  Then if there’s another seat, the senior resident can sit.  Then if there’s another seat, someone can put their purse there.  Then if there’s another seat, a homeless drug addict who wandered into the building can sit there.  But after the attending, the resident, the purse, and the homeless guy are all settled, any available seats are all mine.  (pg. 37)

 

    “Wow you really like him.  You’re in love.”

    “Oh my God, I am not in love!”  I’m really not.  “I hardly know him.  Actually, he’s kind of a jerk.”

    “No, you’re in love,” Kali insists gleefully.  “You luuurve him!  You lurve him and you want to have like a million of his babies.”

    I cringe.  “Don’t mention having babies.  Please.”

    Kali sighs, suddenly glum.  “You’ve got a cute surgeon and all I’ve got is a diabetic cat.”

    “I think I would take your cat over the surgeon,” I say.  “Really.”

    “Well,” Kali says thoughtfully.  “He is a very sweet cat.”  (pg. 186)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Devil Wears Scrubs e-book goes for $2.99 right now, as does its sequel, The Devil You Know.  Freida McFadden has a bunch of novels in the Medical and/or Psychological Thriller genres, and generally in the $3.99-$7.99 price range.

 

“You’re presenting a patient to me and you didn’t even look at his buttocks?”  (pg. 7)

    There is a moderate amount of cussing in The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I counted 21 instances in the first third of the book, none of which were f-bombs.  I presume this reflects the normal amount of cussing that goes on when working in a hospital environment.  The editing was impressive: I didn’t see any typos, which rarely happens when I read a book. 

 

    There are lots of interesting interactions between Jane and her patients/coworkers, but they don't result in much progression in the plot.  Jane seems to screw up quite often, even after a year on the job, and her relationships with Alyssa and her roommate don’t improved much over time.

 

    As mentioned above, the ending is neither exciting or twisty.  Although both the “Job Training” and “Romance” plot threads are resolved via the Epilogue, Jane’s relationships with Alyssa and Julia are left dangling.  But hey, that’s what sequels are for.

 

    Nevertheless, I enjoyed The Devil Wears Scrubs.  I loved Jane’s snarky wit when contemplating the craziness of working in a hospital, liked the variety in the patients she encounters, and was even amused by the Romance angle of the storyline.  This was my first Freida McFadden book and I gather a majority of her novels are Medical Thrillers.  I intend to make a trip to the bookstore in the near future and purchase a couple of those.

 

    8 Stars.  One last thing.  The low Goodreads rating for this book surprised me.  It seems a lot of the reviewers were horrified at the work conditions and personal goings-on that Jane is subjected to.  And while the medical details herein seem quite accurate, I’m sure Freida McFadden “stretched” some of the character development and wacky events in Jane’s life.  Hey, let's not forget that The Devil Wears Scrubs is filed under “Fiction”.

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