Friday, February 11, 2011

County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital PDF

Rating: (48 reviews) Author: Visit Amazon's David Ansell M.D. Page ISBN : 9780897337199 New from $15.52 Format: PDF
Free download PRETITLE County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital Paperback POSTTITLE from mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link

Review

''When it comes to the stories of his patients, many of whom he cared for over decades, from clinic to hospital to funeral, Dr. Ansell soars . . . We cannot have too many of these stories in circulation, to bear witness, to inform and to inspire.'' --New York Times

Heartbreaking and important . . . County is written with a kind of lilting rage. Not the dark, destructive kind of rage that hurls rocks and obscenities at anything in its path but an uplifting and creative rage. A rage that says, 'We can do better than this.' A rage that steadily pushes its way toward hope . . . County is a landmark book, brave and angry and indispensable.'' --Chicago Tribune

''Ansell . . . weaves strands of memoir and policy analysis into a heartfelt account of the hospital's challenges, failures, and successes over three decades, from the civil rights movement to the AIDS crisis, in the process educating and moving the reader to both anger and compassion. His gift for describing the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, makes this work stand out. Ansell skillfully humanizes questions of health-care policy by describing real-life scenarios. Those who enjoyed such books as Richard Selzer's Letters to a Young Doctor will find this book an education for both the mind and the heart.'' --Library Journal

''With the nation's focus on a national health-care policy providing quality medical services to citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, and income level, Ansell's expose' will shock and motivate readers to take a stand on the issue.'' --Publishers Weekly

''Ansell, a leading physician, ably describes what it was like to work at the nation's oldest and largest public hospital . . . Ultimately, Ansell uses his memoir-like account of life at Cook County Hospital to argue for health-care reform so that all Americans can get equal care.'' --Booklist

''Ansell . . . weaves strands of memoir and policy analysis into a heartfelt account of the hospital's challenges, failures, and successes over three decades, from the civil rights movement to the AIDS crisis, in the process educating and moving the reader to both anger and compassion. His gift for describing the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, makes this work stand out. Ansell skillfully humanizes questions of health-care policy by describing real-life scenarios. Those who enjoyed such books as Richard Selzer's Letters to a Young Doctor will find this book an education for both the mind and the heart.'' --Library Journal

''With the nation's focus on a national health-care policy providing quality medical services to citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, and income level, Ansell's expose' will shock and motivate readers to take a stand on the issue.'' --Publishers Weekly --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Book Description

Named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the five best health books of 2011!

County
 is the amazing tale of one of America’s oldest and most unusual urban public hospitals. From its inception as a “poor house” dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago’s Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the health care provider of last resort for the city’s uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of its history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship, to the “final rounds” in 2002, when hundreds of former trainees and personnel, many of whom shared Ansell's vision of resurrecting a hospital in critical condition, gathered to bid the  iconic Victorian hospital building an emotional farewell before it was closed to make way for a new facility.County is about people--from Ansell’s mentors, including the legendary Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients whom he and County’s medical staff labored to diagnose and heal. It is a story about politics; from contentious union strikes, to battles against “patient dumping.” Most importantly, it chronicles the battles for instigating new programs that would help to prevent, rather than just treat, serious illnesses, including the opening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic (the first in the city), as well as an early-detection breast cancer screening program. Finally, it is about an idealistic young man’s medical education in urban America,     a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation, and poverty.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers; 1st Edition edition (May 25, 2013)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0897337190
  • ISBN-13: 978-0897337199
  • Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 5.9 x 8.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital PDF

When I read Dr. David Ansell's book ,County, Life ,Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital, I wondered if
the county hospital he studied and worked at for 17 years was the same place I studied and worked at for 40 years.
He accurately describes a facility that was decrepit ,poorly equipped, with no air conditioning in sweltering wards,
overcrowded with the county's poorest and sickest; I never saw the rats and roaches.He repeatedly discredits the
medical and nursing staff , the heart and soul of the hospital .Could he not have presented a more balanced
portrayal of the County Hospital and still have made his case for a single payer health care system?

I graduated from Cook County School of Nursing in 1963. I am President of the Board of Directors of the Alumni
Association of Cook County School of Nursing.I worked at the hospital from 1972-2008, 32 of those years as a
Nurse Practitioner on both surgical and medical services . My duties took me to every ward, clinic,department and
nook and cranny of the complex. I worked along side intelligent, dedicated, caring nurses and doctors, not the lazy,
absentee attendings or the" jaded, uncaring, incompetent" nurses Ansell recalls. He apparently never encountered
any of the dedicated, overworked nurses, who so often clued in cocky,arrogant and "clueless" interns.

I am offended by his general disregard for nurses throughout his book as well as his disparaging remarks about the
senior medical staff. I find it hard to believe that after 17 years Ansell could only single out one Nurse Practitioner in
the clinic who misdiagnosed a patient (describing her as an evil-eyed ,bleached and lacquered blond ) and another
nurse as "packed" into a "too-tight" uniform.

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