The Emergency - Thomas Fisher
This book is brilliant! As someone who is slightly obsessed with medical drama, and has also had to deal with the US healthcare system several times (and who has also witnessed firsthand how it really functions), and as someone who is currently studying to hopefully one day be a nurse this book really appealed to me. It’s the real life story of what it is like to work in the ER of a hospital in an underserved community, during a pandemic and also during “normal times”. Dr Thomas Fisher has 20 years of clinical practice and works in a hospital in the South Side of Chicago, where he treats the same people he grew up with, trying to help them in a system that restricts him (and everyone else) in so many ways.
The Emergency is structured in a way that allows Dr Fisher to walk us through shifts at the ER in one chapter, and then bring up many of the major issues plaguing the US healthcare system in the following chapter, in the form of a letter to a patient he treated in the previous chapter. Dr Fisher brings up systemic issues such as racism and segregation, where poor, Black people are made to wait for hours in chairs, while richer white people with good insurance are whisked through the ER as VIPs. But he also shows just how hard it is to actually help people when he only has 3 minutes to spend with each patient, and this leads to issues being missed or misdiagnosed. And overarching all of this he shows just how disconnected the government and policymakers are from the people they are meant to serve.
This book is just SO GOOD. And hopefully for many an eyeopener. A must read for everyone in my opinion!
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.