On Call
A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency
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- S/ 49.90
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- S/ 49.90
Descripción editorial
On Call begins with a newly-minted doctor checking in for her first day of residency--wearing the long white coat of an MD and being called "Doctor" for the first time. Having studied at Yale and Dartmouth, Dr. Emily Transue arrives in Seattle to start her internship in Internal Medicine just after graduating from medical school. This series of loosely interconnected scenes from the author's medical training concludes her residency three years later.
During her first week as a student on the medical wards, Dr. Transue watched someone come into the emergency room in cardiac arrest and die. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before-it was a long way from books and labs. So she began to record her experiences as she gained confidence putting her book knowledge to work.
The stories focus on the patients Dr. Transue encountered in the hospital, ER and clinic; some are funny and others tragic. They range in scope from brief interactions in the clinic to prolonged relationships during hospitalization. There is a man newly diagnosed with lung cancer who is lyrical about his life on a sunny island far away, and a woman, just released from a breathing machine after nearly dying, who sits up and demands a cup of coffee.
Though the book has a great deal of medical content, the focus is more on the stories of the patients' lives and illnesses and the relationships that developed between the patients and the author, and the way both parties grew in the course of these experiences.
Along the way, the book describes the life of a resident physician and reflects on the way the medical system treats both its patients and doctors. On Call provides a window into the experience of patients at critical junctures in life and into the author's own experience as a new member of the medical profession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
During her three years as a resident in internal medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, Transue wrote about her patients as a way to guard against burnout and share her experiences with friends and family. This moving collection of her stories conveys vividly, sometimes painfully, the atmosphere of overwork, exhaustion and insecurity in which a resident works; the long shifts and sleepless nights, the moments when she cannot contain her tears, the times when she is haunted by fears that she has made the wrong decision. But she never loses sympathy for her patients the heart attack victim who regrets not remembering his near-death experience, the old woman who has a pet name for her walker, the psychotic who imagines he is in constant pain and just wants her to hold his hand, even the grumpy man with emphysema who smokes two packs a day and complains about the treatment he has to receive as a result, and the habitual drunks lined up every night on stretchers in a back hallway. It's reassuring to read that a doctor isn't afraid to express compassion for her patients and that she is eager to listen and learn as they talk about their hopes and fears. There are many touching moments here, especially when she's reminded by a patient who is dying that it's important to look out the window and enjoy the view on a sunny day. Her descriptions of medical procedures can be graphic, but she presents an intriguing picture of a side of medicine many people never see.
