Customer Reviews

Emergency Doctor

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

A very enjoyable, quick read. What struck me the most about this book was the differences in perspective since the time of it's writing (1987)--it mentions patients that complain about doctors wearing gloves when that is now standard, and expected, procedure. It describes the infancy of managed care and all it's depersonalization of those it's supposed to protect and care for. And most of all, it describes doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff who always put the patient first, who see their jobs as noble and go about it completely humble and without ego. Perhaps exposure to such tv shows as ER and Chicago Hope in more recent years have given laymen a more cold/cynical view of things, but some times the professionals in this book seem almost too good to be true. On the other hand, the emergencies described are fascinating and compelling.

Graphic and well-written, this book held my interest--most of the time. The different stories are extremely interesting, and at times, completely horrific. The maggots and lice had me swallowing bile. A wonderful look into what doctors and nurses REALLY deal with. I only have two complaints about the book. One is that it really slowed down when we weren't in the E.R. I skimmed over a lot of the doctors' personal and office life. My other complaint is that the book is outdated. Obviously, this can't be helped, but it was still annoying. In the 13 years since this book was written, so many medical advances have been made in different areas like AIDS and drug overdoses. If you don't care about all this, then the book will probably be a good read for you. I'm sure that the medical problems doctors see have remained the same, it's just that the treatments have changed. You'll still get a good idea about the horrors that show up at the emergency departments.

This book was mainly a teaching tool about the hospital noted int the title. Not a memoir about the life of an Emergency Room Doctor. Granted I did learn some new things, however if you have any medical training it is the same as what you were taught in classes.

Ziegler writes about the day-to-day travails of the ER staff at one of the nation's oldest hospitals, Bellevue. The book starts off with a wild case: an overturned crane has trapped a woman and paramedics and doctors rush to save her before amputation becomes an option. Some chapters are devoted to the doctors' personal lives, but the real action only takes place in the hospital. Given that the book was published in 1987, medicine has advanced to the point where this book could be considered a historical narrative, but it's still entertaining.

I bought this book because Goldfrank is one of the living godfathers of clinical toxicology and Bellevue is one of the top EM training programs in the country. I returned this book after 40 pages because, as someone training to be an EM doc, I found the material tedious, clumsy, and, frankly... boring. For me, the ED vignette from The House of God was much more insightful and striking. I can't comment from a lay perspective.

I found the stories bland and the facts skewed. The book seemed to have a strange moral slant which sacrificed its credibility. It also seemed poorly researched as the stories were incomplete, and the statistics were without footnotes.

I would recommend this book as fiction to a twelve-year old from the suburbs who isn't allowed to watch the news.

I like medical novels and found this one a really good read. Good beach book.