Intensive care
Subtitle: a doctor's journal
By: John F. Murray
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Berkeley, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 296
ISBN-13: 9780520220898
Subjects: Critical care units; Autobiography; San Francisco General Hospital (Calif.); Intensive Care; Anecdotes; Physicians; Critical care medicine; Intensive care
Description: An affecting view from the trenches, a seasoned doctor's minute-by-minute and day-by-day account of life in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a major inner-city hospital, San Francisco General. John F. Murray, for many years Chief of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division of the hospital and a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, takes readers on his daily ward rounds, introducing them to the desperately ill patients he treats as well as to the young physicians and medical students who accompany him. Writing with compassion and knowledge accumulated over a long career, Murray presents the true stories of patients who show up with myriad disorders: asthma, cardiac failure, gastrointestinal diseases, complications due to AIDS, the effects of drug and alcohol abuse, emphysema. Readers will come away from this book with a comprehensive understanding of what an ICU is, what it does, who gets admitted, and how doctors and nurses make decisions concerning life-threatening medical problems.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-281) and index.