A review by bookwormmichelle
The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER by Thomas Fisher

5.0

This was sooo good. I expected great things of it, and it more than delivered. This was a gripping series of stories from the U of Chicago medical center ER, on the south side of Chicago, and we get to see violence, illness and COVID wreak havoc on the system and stress the available resources and personnel. The author has such a well of empathy for the circumstances of his patients, and such a clear vision of the problems that affect the poor, Black, and uninsured populations he serves. Some reviews seem focused on his criticisms of the system as not celebrating the heroism of his coworkers enough, but that is not at all what I found. He does show the dedication of the staff, but heroic staff in an under-resourced and broken system will still be limited to worse care than could otherwise be. I
loved this, and would recommend it to any reader wanting to understand emergency medicine and its interactions with the social problems we refuse to engage with. Anyone should be so lucky as to find a practitioner like Dr. Fisher, but we need to pay attention to his very real frustrations, because they are echoed across the country.