What Readers Are Saying

“Overall, it was a charming story of physicians who experienced things in their lives which they could not attribute to coincidence. One story is the well-attested account of a woman with end-stage multiple sclerosis who experienced a sudden and complete recovery. There is no doubt about this one — it is multiply corroborated and truly unexplained.”

“In 'Physicians' Untold Stories,' Scott Kolbaba invites over two dozen physicians to relate encounters of the unexplainable and miraculous in their medical practices. Divine intervention in hopeless situations is portrayed convincingly and with clarity. This fine book is inspirational and recommended for anyone seeking hope and strength in troubled circumstances.”

“Anatole France once said 'chance' was God's signature when He did not choose to sign His name. Dr. Kolbaba's book is a collection of such chances as told to him by other physicians. The fact that the stories come from a number of other individuals over a span of years makes them believable. I highly recommend this book.”

“MUST READ! These stories are the ones you need to hear — the ones doctors never talk about! I'm also in medicine and have had more than one time I've been drawn to do things by gut or Heavenly Father. Over the last 30 years respect for doctors has decreased. People need to read these stories! It will lift you up and change how you feel!”

“A feel-good book of hope and wonder that will appeal most to readers who believe in divine intervention. Kolbaba has catalogued inspiration moments into small stories perfect for bite-size reading.”

“Full of uplifting stories that point to the existence of a higher being without being specifically religious. Answered prayers, inspired actions and life after death. Read with a box of tissues and be prepared for goosebumps. Quick read, mostly because I didn't want to put it down.”

“As a cardiologist who has been present at countless codes, I recognized every story in this book — not the specific details, but the category of experience. These are the moments we don't document in charts, the things we tell our spouses when we get home, the phenomena every experienced physician knows about but no textbook acknowledges. Dr. Kolbaba has done the medical profession a profound service by bringing these accounts into the light.”

“I've worked in hospice for 18 years and have witnessed terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, and patients reaching toward something we couldn't see more times than I can count. This book validated those experiences in a way nothing else ever has. I now recommend it to families struggling with grief — it doesn't tell them what to believe, it just lets them know these phenomena are real, documented, and reported by credible witnesses.”

“I came to this book as a skeptic. I stayed because the methodology is sound — Dr. Kolbaba didn't set out to prove anything. He collected testimony from the most credible witnesses possible and presented it without sensationalism. The chapter on near-death experiences alone is worth the price: it accurately references the AWARE study, van Lommel's work, and the Greyson scale while letting the physicians speak in their own words. This is how the conversation between science and the unexplained should be conducted.”

“I purchased this book after losing my father to COVID-19. I was not looking for religion — I was looking for something that would make the fear of death feel less absolute. This book did that. The physician accounts are specific, detailed, and told by people whose professional credibility depends on accurate observation. I've since bought copies for three clients processing their own losses. It opens a door that grief had sealed shut.”

“I had a near-death experience during emergency surgery in 2019. For five years I told no one except my husband — not my doctors, not my friends, not my therapist. I was afraid of being labeled delusional. This book was the first time I heard credible people describe exactly what I experienced. The out-of-body awareness. The light. The sense of complete peace. Reading it felt like permission to stop hiding something that had become the most meaningful experience of my life.”

“I practice in a busy urban ICU. The burnout is real — moral injury, compassion fatigue, the weight of decisions that determine who lives and who doesn't. This book unexpectedly addressed something deeper than the supernatural: it validated the emotional burden of being a physician. Seeing colleagues across specialties describe their own struggles, their own unexplainable moments, their own doubts and breakthroughs — it felt like the peer support I've needed for 15 years but never found.”

“Simple, clean prose. No grandstanding. Just physicians telling what happened — and they tell it with the same matter-of-fact clarity you'd expect from a medical report. That's what makes the stories so convincing. The chapter about the chaplain's experience moved me to tears. I've given this book to friends facing illness, to a neighbor whose son died, and to my book club. Every single person found something in it that spoke to them personally.”

“As an oncologist, I've seen spontaneous remissions. I don't call them miracles — I call them statistical outliers we don't yet understand. But I also don't dismiss them. This book walks that line well: it reports extraordinary events through the lens of physicians who witnessed them, without demanding that readers draw one particular conclusion. My only critique is that I wish the book included more discussion of the mechanisms that might someday explain these phenomena. But as a collection of testimony, it's exactly what it claims to be.”

“I've been a hospital chaplain for 22 years. The deathbed phenomena described in this book — the visions, the reaching, the sudden clarity, the sense of a presence in the room — these are weekly occurrences in my world. What makes this book unique is that the witnesses are physicians. When a doctor says 'I cannot explain what I saw,' it carries a weight that my own testimony does not, because doctors are professionally committed to materialist explanations. This book bridges the gap between faith and science more effectively than anything I've encountered.”

“Twenty-three years in family practice and I thought I'd seen everything. This book reminded me that 'everything' includes things we can't explain — and that's not a failure of medicine, it's a feature of being human. The physician interviews are raw, honest, and often emotional. Several chapters made me cry. This isn't a book you just read; it's a book you feel, and you're different afterward.”

“I approach claims of the supernatural with methodological skepticism, and I appreciated that this book doesn't ask readers to abandon that skepticism. The physician accounts are presented as testimony, not as proof. Dr. Kolbaba includes research context (van Lommel, Parnia, the AWARE studies) that allows scientifically literate readers to evaluate the claims themselves. A few chapters could have benefited from more rigorous sourcing, but overall this is a serious contribution to a conversation that medicine has avoided for too long.”

“I bought this book at the recommendation of a friend after my mother passed away in hospice. The stories about people who seemed to see deceased loved ones in their final hours brought me unexpected comfort — not because I believe in ghosts, but because they made me feel less alone in the mystery of what happened in my mother's room in those last hours. It's a gentle book. It doesn't preach. It just tells you what physicians have seen and lets you sit with it. I'm grateful it exists.”

“I witness the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness every day in the OR. This book captures what I've long suspected but never articulated: that boundary is not as clean as our monitors suggest. The chapter on shared death experiences — where people at the bedside share the dying person's transition — aligns with things I've observed that I cannot explain. I'm recommending this to every resident I train.”

“I'm in my third year of medical school and already I've seen things I was told wouldn't happen — patients who somehow knew things they shouldn't, recoveries that made attendings shake their heads, moments in patient rooms that felt thick with something unnameable. This book made me feel, for the first time since starting clinical rotations, that I wasn't alone in noticing these things. It should be required reading alongside Robbins and Harrison's.”