Hospital
Julie Salamon · 2008 · 384 pages
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About this book
A fact of life is that one day, you or a loved one will be a patient in a hospital. When you walk through that door, you will enter a world where bureaucracy, miscommunication, budgets, politics, personalities, and religion can influence the medical attention you receive as much as seeing a doctor. The story of how hospitals actually run has never been told—until now—from the vantage point of the people who work inside. Bestselling author and award-winning journalist Julie Salamon follows a year in the life New York’s Maimonides Medical Center, painting a revealing portrait of how big medicine operates today in Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids. Noted for casting surprising new light on subjects we think we know, Salamon (author of The Devil’s Candy, Facing the Wind, and Rambam’s Ladder) was granted an astonishing “warts and all” level of access by the hospital. She followed doctors, patients, administrators, nurses, ambulance drivers, cooks and cleaning staff. The resulting narrative is not unlike a novel, with a richly detailed cast of characters: There are bitter internal feuds, warm personal connections, comedy, egoism, greed, love and loss. There are rabbinic edicts to contend with, as well as imams and herbalists and local politicians. There are systems foul-ups that keep blood test results from being delivered on time, compulsive bosses, careless record-keepers, shortages of everything except
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Hospitals: The Best Books on How They Really Work, in Order
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