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3.27 AVERAGE
3.27 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Wow, this was written 50years ago. I'm ready to read a updated version. Reminds me of a lawyer school book written in74 .
It was interesting to see how a hospital was run in the 1960's but at the same time, I felt more emphasis would be placed on patients. This book felt very much like a position paper to me: What are the pros and cons of the current system?? where should be go from here in the medical world?? etc.
This book was not bad. It is my first Crichton non-fiction and it was fascinating. It felt a bit like a time capsule from the 1960's. His observations on socialized healthcare (we should have it) and how automation, computers and chatbots might improve medicine were very interesting considering all we have today. Yet we're still working on a central system for sharing healthcare information.
That said there is a ton of medical jargon in this book and some pretty long dry periods. On the other hand the cases he focused on and the history he explained were pretty interesting. In the 60's surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital were able to re-attach a completely crushed hand!
I don't have a particular horse in the "is a teaching hospital a good thing" race so the latter half of the book where he talks about how having students and residents in a hospital is a good thing did get a bit boring.
That said there is a ton of medical jargon in this book and some pretty long dry periods. On the other hand the cases he focused on and the history he explained were pretty interesting. In the 60's surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital were able to re-attach a completely crushed hand!
I don't have a particular horse in the "is a teaching hospital a good thing" race so the latter half of the book where he talks about how having students and residents in a hospital is a good thing did get a bit boring.
I picked this book up because I'm a big fan of the show ER and Michael Crichton is the Creator. The book is not a novel like I had originally thought but I still enjoyed the book. It tells you the story of 5 different patients coming into the emergency room of a teaching hospital in Boston. The cases set up a scenario and Michael goes on to tell about how much medicine has changed in a short period of time and yet how some things took an extremely long time to be accepted. It also points to downfalls that could effect the future of hospitals. The part I found most interesting is that the book was written in 1969 and while not published until the 90s much is still the same and yet much has progressed. Also he foresees many things that have now occurred or are currently being debated. A very interesting book if you are interested in the inner workings of a hospital.
medium-paced
Picked this up because I've been a huge fan of ER, which was based on Crichton's book. I think this is fascinating as a good historical document. The cost-breakdown chapter felt too relevant to the present-day, where accessing healthcare in the U.S. is still prohibitively expensive. Overall, I think I would have gotten more out of this book if I were a med student or had more of an interest in the history of medicine.
From the back cover: A construction worker in his fifties is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold. A middle-aged railroad dispatcher develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious. A young worker nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident. A woman traveling alone has persistent chest pain and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen. A mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.
My reactions
These five patients’ cases are used to illustrate the workings of a large academic medical center: Massachusetts General Hospital. Crichton, best known for thrillers and the TV show E.R., wrote this nonfiction explanation of how a hospital works when he was barely out of medical school himself – November 1969. I happened to get a 25th anniversary edition, which includes a “new” Author’s Note dated 1994. In that forward he writes: “When I reread the book recently, I was struck by how much in medicine has changed – and also, by how much has not changed. Eventually I decided not to revise the text, but to let it stand as a statement of what medical practice was like in the late 1960s, and how issues in health care were perceived at that time.”
Another twenty years have gone by and Crichton’s comments still ring true. Much has changed, and much remains the same. The system of training new physicians has changed little, though residents no longer have the gruelingly long hours that were the norm when Crichton was writing. Technological advances have certainly changed the way in which certain services are delivered, but third-party payers (i.e. insurance companies, including government programs such as Medicare) have much more to say about what services the patient receives and how. (A friend recently had a mastectomy as an outpatient procedure!)
So, while this work is obviously dated, I still found it interesting.
My reactions
These five patients’ cases are used to illustrate the workings of a large academic medical center: Massachusetts General Hospital. Crichton, best known for thrillers and the TV show E.R., wrote this nonfiction explanation of how a hospital works when he was barely out of medical school himself – November 1969. I happened to get a 25th anniversary edition, which includes a “new” Author’s Note dated 1994. In that forward he writes: “When I reread the book recently, I was struck by how much in medicine has changed – and also, by how much has not changed. Eventually I decided not to revise the text, but to let it stand as a statement of what medical practice was like in the late 1960s, and how issues in health care were perceived at that time.”
Another twenty years have gone by and Crichton’s comments still ring true. Much has changed, and much remains the same. The system of training new physicians has changed little, though residents no longer have the gruelingly long hours that were the norm when Crichton was writing. Technological advances have certainly changed the way in which certain services are delivered, but third-party payers (i.e. insurance companies, including government programs such as Medicare) have much more to say about what services the patient receives and how. (A friend recently had a mastectomy as an outpatient procedure!)
So, while this work is obviously dated, I still found it interesting.
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
It’s really interesting, there’s a hospital break down of cost which got tiring at some point. It’s nonfiction and would is doubly interesting because now HIPAA would not allow a book like this to be written. I’m a medical drama nerd for the first few seasons of ER (not greys anatomy) but it reads like the TV show St Elsewhere from the 80s.