The Emergency by Thomas Fisher

The Emergency by Thomas Fisher

The riveting, pulse-pounding story of a year in the life of an emergency room doctor trying to steer his patients and colleagues through a crushing pandemic and a violent summer, amidst a healthcare system that seems determined to leave them behind

ONE OF NEWSWEEK'S MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022

As an emergency room doctor working on the rapid evaluation unit, Dr. Thomas Fisher has about three minutes to spend with the patients who come into the South Side of Chicago ward where he works before directing them to the next stage of their care. Bleeding: three minutes. Untreated wound that becomes life-threatening: three minutes. Kidney failure: three minutes. He examines his patients inside and out, touches their bodies, comforts and consoles them, and holds their hands on what is often the worst day of their lives. Like them, he grew up on the South Side; this is his community and he grinds day in and day out to heal them.

Through twenty years of clinical practice, time as a White House fellow, and work as a healthcare entrepreneur, Dr. Fisher has seen firsthand how our country's healthcare system can reflect the worst of society: treating the poor as expendable in order to provide top-notch care to a few. In The Emergency, Fisher brings us through his shift, as he works with limited time and resources to treat incoming patients. And when he goes home, he remains haunted by what he sees throughout his day. The brutal wait times, the disconnect between hospital executives and policymakers and the people they're supposed to serve, and the inaccessible solutions that could help his patients. To cope with the relentless onslaught exacerbated by the pandemic, Fisher begins writing letters to patients and colleagues--letters he will never send--explaining it all to them as best he can.

As fast-paced as an ER shift, The Emergency has all the elements that make doctors' stories so compelling--the high stakes, the fascinating science and practice of medicine, the deep and fraught interactions between patients and doctors, the persistent contemplation of mortality. And, with the rare dual perspective of somebody who also has his hands deep in policy work, Fisher connects these human stories to the sometimes-cruel machinery of care. Beautifully written, vulnerable and deeply empathetic, The Emergency is a call for reform that offers a fresh vision of health care as a foundation of social justice.

After two Christian tours of the Holy Land led by his pastor, The Rev. Frederick R. Gutekunst, in 1978 and 1985, Thomas Fisher decided to write this chronicle of some of the many persons great and small who visited Jerusalem over the course of thirty-eight centuries.
Thomas made his living before retirement in a technical field, but in the research for this book he drew on his studies of world history at Fairleigh Dickinson University, from Bible studies, and from every book he could find about Jerusalem.
Although most historians probably don't regard the Bible as reliable history, Dr. Werner Keller's 1963 landmark book, The Bible As History In Pictures, contains an historical account of the Assyrians' siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E. that seems to corroborate exactly the depiction of the event in II Kings 18:1-19:37. Thomas also found valuable resources in the magazines Biblical Archaeology Review and Archaeology.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593230671
ISBN 10	0593230671
Title	The Emergency
Author	Thomas Fisher
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2022-03-22
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.