The emergency : a year of healing and heartbreak in a Chicago ER / Thomas Fisher.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : One World, [2022]Copyright date: ©2022Edition: First editionDescription: xvi, 254 pages ; 22 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780593230671
- 0593230671
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 362.1089 F536 | Available | 33111010626949 | ||||
|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 362.1089 F536 | Available | 33111010809263 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
The riveting, pulse-pounding story of a year in the life of an emergency room doctor trying to steer his patients and colleagues through a crushing pandemic and a violent summer, amidst a healthcare system that seems determined to leave them behind
"Gripping . . . eloquent . . . This book reminds us how permanently interesting our bodies are, especially when they go wrong."-- The New York Times
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time
As an emergency room doctor working on the rapid evaluation unit, Dr. Thomas Fisher has about three minutes to spend with the patients who come into the South Side of Chicago ward where he works before directing them to the next stage of their care. Bleeding: three minutes. Untreated wound that becomes life-threatening: three minutes. Kidney failure: three minutes. He examines his patients inside and out, touches their bodies, comforts and consoles them, and holds their hands on what is often the worst day of their lives. Like them, he grew up on the South Side; this is his community and he grinds day in and day out to heal them.
Through twenty years of clinical practice, time as a White House fellow, and work as a healthcare entrepreneur, Dr. Fisher has seen firsthand how our country's healthcare system can reflect the worst of society: treating the poor as expendable in order to provide top-notch care to a few. In The Emergency, Fisher brings us through his shift, as he works with limited time and resources to treat incoming patients. And when he goes home, he remains haunted by what he sees throughout his day. The brutal wait times, the disconnect between hospital executives and policymakers and the people they're supposed to serve, and the inaccessible solutions that could help his patients. To cope with the relentless onslaught exacerbated by the pandemic, Fisher begins writing letters to patients and colleagues--letters he will never send--explaining it all to them as best he can.
As fast-paced as an ER shift, The Emergency has all the elements that make doctors' stories so compelling--the high stakes, the fascinating science and practice of medicine, the deep and fraught interactions between patients and doctors, the persistent contemplation of mortality. And, with the rare dual perspective of somebody who also has his hands deep in policy work, Fisher connects these human stories to the sometimes-cruel machinery of care. Beautifully written, vulnerable and deeply empathetic, The Emergency is a call for reform that offers a fresh vision of health care as a foundation of social justice.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-246) and index.
Foreword / by Ta-Nehisi Coates - February 2020 -- March 2020 -- Dear Janet -- November 2019 -- Dear Nicole -- May 2020 - Dear Robert -- July 4, 2020 -- Dear Dania -- August 2020 -- Dear Richard -- September 2020 -- Dear Ms. Favors -- November 2020 -- Dear Mom.
"Thomas Fisher was raised on the South Side of Chicago and even as a kid understood how close death could feel -- he came from a family of pioneering doctors who believed in staying in the community, but on those streets he saw just how vulnerable Black bodies could be. Determined to follow his family's legacy, Fisher studied public health at Dartmouth and Harvard, then returned to the University of Chicago Medical School. As soon as he graduated, he began working in the ER that served his South Side community. Even as his career took him to stints at the White House, working on what would eventually become the Affordable Care Act and helping develop HMOs for underserved communities, he never gave up his ER rotations. He knew that to really understand healthcare disparities and medical needs, you had to stay close. The emergency room is designed for the most urgent cases, but it is often the first resort for South Side residents without any other choice. Fisher deals with those patients with necessary dispatch, but what he really wants to do is to spend his time helping them understand how it is they ended up in the ER -- talk to them about the role economics plays in their health; the history of healthcare for the poor and marginalized; why Black people in particular distrust the medical profession; why they don't have a personal physician; the effect of food deserts and education gaps on their health; and, most of all, why they live in a society that has deemed their bodies and lives as less important than others. In this book he gets to have those lost conversations. This is the story of a dramatic year in the life of the Chicago ER -- a year of an unprecedented pandemic and a ferocious epidemic of homicides -- interwoven with the primer in healthcare one doctor wishes he could give his patients. Full of day-to-day drama, heartbreaking stories, compelling personal narrative, and penetrating analysis of our most fundamental failure as a society, this is a page-turning and mind-opening work that will offer readers a fresh vision of healthcare as a foundation of social justice"-- Provided by publisher.