Customer Reviews

Intensive Care: A Doctor's Journal

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a clear, honest look inside the world of ICU. Concise, well-written, without the glitz and exaggeration served up by commercial TV in shows such as ER. This gifted physician shares his world view and realistically portrays the complexity and stresses of the day to day operation of an urban intensive care unit. Don't look for sentimentality here, this is more in the realm of science. Good job.

As an ICU nurse, I am often disturbed by the average person's expectations when a family member is treated in our intensive care unit. Too often, we are expected to perform miracles when at best all we can do is delay the course of nature for a few days or weeks while the family adjusts to the concept that their loved one is dying. This is frequently at the expense of the patient who is subjected to a long and uncomfortable death. Dr. Murray paints a true to life picture of what happens in the ICU by providing a day by day journal covering four weeks at San Francisco General Hospital. He provides an enlightening view of critical care that is both compassionate and accurate. His writing style is easy to understand, and the stories he tells of each patient he meets are compelling. He covers all; the successes, the failures, and those in between. Dr. Murray also addresses the ethical dilemmas facing us today regarding self determination and the allocation of scarce resources. A must read if you really want to know what happens to your loved ones in the ICU.

In 2007 Joan Didion published "The Year of Magical Thinking", and in 2011 "Blue Nights". These two books chronicled Didion's experience with the very sudden and tragic deaths of her husband and daughter, both within a few years of one another. In one of those books (I believe it was "Blue Nights") Didion mentions that she aggravated hospital staff with her technical questions about the Intensive Care Unit's (ICU's) care of her daughter. She had just finished reading "Intensive Care - A Doctor's Journal", and, armed with the new knowledge and technical vocabulary gleaned from Dr. Murray's book, Didion felt empowered to suggest to the ICU doctors that they consider this or that procedure or diagnosis.

I decided that, as a master essayist and critic, Didion wouldn't spend her time reading, much less recommending "Intensive Care - A Doctor's Journal" unless it was well-written and highly informative.

In reading the book's abstract I also noticed that "Intensive Care: ... " chronicles Dr. John Murray's s experience at San Francisco's General Hospital (SFGH) where, as part of my 1967 Peace Corps training, I'd spent a night assisting SFGH's emergency unit doctors when this M.A.S.H.-like unit was treating a crushing number of "In-coming", mostly from San Francisco's Mission District.

So I decided to borrow or buy Dr. Murray's book. Since our local library didn't have a copy, I checked to see if it was available at Amazon.com at a reasonable price. I found one Amazon book seller offered a used, hardback copy for only $2.98, even though the same book was also offered "New" for up to $28. Unable to resist bargains, I ordered the $2.98 copy, and it arrived promptly in excellent condition.

Just before writing this review I noticed that there have been only four other Amazon reviews of "Intensive Care: A Doctor's Journal", and each review appears to have been written by residency interns (young doctors) who apparently read it on the recommendation of their teachers, just prior to, or during their first rotation into an ICU.

But "Intensive Care: ... " is definitely not a highly technical book written only for those with medical degrees. It is a very well-organized and highly readable book that is suitable for a non-medical, non-technical, lay persons like myself [and Joan Didion] who is interested in what, how and why hospital doctors make the patient care decisions that they do every day. I read the book in just two sittings, so it's not a difficult "read" at all. Indeed it is an engaging and even exciting, hour by hour journal/diary of a wise and experienced doctor as he makes his rounds during his 28 day assignment as lead physician in a major hospital's Intensive Care Unit.

I believe that we should all have some such interest in the topic since at one time or another almost all of us will have direct or indirect experience with hospital care. In the past 20 years I've been hospitalized for 2 hip and 2 shoulder surgeries, and on several occasions I've accompanied family members to hospital emergency rooms or made post-surgery visits. I do not know what the statistics are, but I would guess that at some point in their lives, perhaps 35% of all U.S. adults will be admitted to an emergency room and/or an ICU ... or they will undergo surgery and receive post surgery care. At other points in their lives a much greater percentage of American adults will have to visit, care for, and/or make decisions about loved ones who need emergency, surgical or Intensive Care Unit treatment.

All those Americans would certainly benefit greatly from reading Dr. Murray's journal.

This book was great! Especially for anyone interested in a medical career. The book provides an overview of what took place during Dr. Murray's month as the attending doctor at a Medical ICU. It provides very detailed accounts of a number of cases. Some cases ended on a positive note, while others not so much. I would recommend this book. In fact, Dr. Murray is still practicing one month a year at this hospital!

Several Days in the Life of a surgeon. His anxieties, dilemmas, confidence levels and opinions of what happens in the ICU of a hospital. I think that this book might be best suited for other doctors to co-experience the thought processes of a fellow surgeon and not feel alone in their own mental traumas.