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The Night Shift (2010)

by Brian Goldman(Favorite Author)

3.72 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1554683912 (ISBN13: 9781554683918)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

HarperCollins

review 1: Story Description:HarperCollins|September 3, 2010|Hardcover|ISBN: 978-1-55468-391-8Dr. Brian Goldman is both an emergency room physician at Mount Sinai and a prominent medical journalist. Never one to shy away from controversy, Goldman specializes in kicking open the doors to the medical establishment revealing what really goes on behind the scenes – and in the minds of doctors and nurses.In The Night Shift, Goldman shares his experiences in the witching hours at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto. We meet the kinds of patients who walk into an ER after midnight: late night revellers injured on their way home after last call, teens assaulted in the streets by other teens and a woman who punches another woman out of jealousy over a man. But Goldman also reveals t... morehe emotional, heartbreaking side of everyday ER visits: adult children forced to make life and death decisions about critically ill parents, victims of sexual assault, and mentally ill and homeless patients looking for understanding and a quick fix in the twenty-four hour waiting room. Written with Goldman’s trademark honesty and with surprising humour, The Night Shift is also a frank look at many issues facing the medical profession today, and offers a highly compelling inside view into an often shrouded world. My Review:This was an absolutely phenomenal book! Dr. Goldman blows the lid off what really goes on inside the Emergency Room for those inquiring minds who want to know. Goldman is frank, honest and doesn’t mince words about both the good and bad sides of his profession. The decisions, quick thinking and the speed at which these doctors and nurses often have to work is staggering. When you’re in the position of trying to save someone’s life you don’t have time to stand around and take a lot of time to think of your best options. At times, you just have to go with the flow so to speak.I feel terribly sorry for the mentally ill who are often misunderstood and don’t always get a sympathetic or understanding ear at the emergency department and Goldman admits that. Some just don’t have the patience to administer to the needs and requirements of these people in society which is sad. It must be very frustrating for the patient. The Night Shift was a riveting read and kept me glued from the first page to the last page and quite frankly, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted more stories. I’ll definitely be recommending this to friends and family.
review 2: I can't say that I didn't enjoy this book, because I did... a lot of what Dr. Goldman described, I have witnessed in my own short career as an RN, albeit on a med/surgical floor. Although patients are typically stable, I have been involved in a code situation (a successful one. The woman crashed twice and is still alive. That's something to be proud of), and I can attest to the fact that although you are exhausted running it, adrenaline comes over and all you can think is, "COME ON! BREATHE!"That being said, I was looking for a medical book that was written for... well, me. Although I respect Dr. Goldman's efforts at explaining procedures so that laymen would be able to understand the procedures, I simply found this off-putting. Whenever I have read a book and didn't understand something, I looked it up to gain an understanding of it. That way, the story doesn't become compromised by repetitive explanations (did you know that Lorazepam (Ativan) is a sedative used to help with anxiety? I found that out three times in this book, although I already knew before the first time it was mentioned...) I just found it tedious, getting away from the true story by having to read explanations that almost felt... patronizing to read. Like explaining things to a child. I'm not into that.Lastly, and it's because I'm a nurse, I found it very clear that this was written by a doctor, not a nurse. There is one instance where the nurse who got the patient into the room explained the subjective symptoms to Dr. Goldman, stated that the patient believed it to be food poisoning. When he went into the room and thoroughly assessed the man's abdomen, he found a large abdomen aneurysm, which is life threatening. When the nurse asked him if it was just food poisoning, he smugly told her that it was an aneurysm and patted himself on the back for having not listened to her. Come on, Dr. Goldman. Nurses are not allowed to diagnose, that's one. And two, the nurse had not done a completely abdominal assessment on the man, because she was awaiting your assessment. The only objective data that would have been obtained by that point was likely this patients vital signs. While I do believe that Dr. Goldman holds a fairly good relationship with his nurses (and cites a colleague who states that without his team of nurses and other professionals, he would sink), there were instances like this that bothered me. Nurses get shit on (quite literally sometimes) every day in their field. In certain settings (like my own) if a nurse isn't there watching the patient and making the call to get the doc in to assess them, they would die. We need to respect each other. That's why we're called a team.I think that reading this book has taught me that maybe I'm best to stick with fiction, instead of reading about something so close to my reality... I like imagining things instead... less

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