Something for the Pain: Compassion and Burnout in the ER

"At this time of the morning--two, three, four o'clock--lonely people seek solace in the fluorescent light of the emergency room. If you've been to a twenty-four-hour grocery store late at night, you may have seen the same people. They hesitate, put a can of soup back on the shelf, then take it down again and put it back in the cart. Refugees from the daylight world, they move with the timidity of those whose lives don't mesh with others'. Night is the time when the lucky people get to sleep. But toothaches throb more in the dark, and backaches become unbearable. People in pain abandon their restless beds and flee their empty kitchens. They go out into the night, in search of comfort."

These are the words of Paul Austin, as he introduces the reader to the men and women--eccentric and well-adjusted, drunk and sober--who make up a day's work in the ER. From describing the process of issuing a death certificate for a man who shot himself in the head to attending a child in trauma from a car accident, to finding the cause of an elderly man's fever, Austin paints a vivid picture of life in the ER and its effects on an ER doctor.

In his eye-opening account, Austin recalls how the daily grind of long, erratic shifts and endless lines of patients with sad stories sends him down a path of bitterness and cynicism. His own life becomes Exhibit A, as he details the emotional detachment that estranges him from himself and his family. Gritty, powerful, and ultimately redemptive, Austin's memoir is a revealing glimpse into the fragility of compassion and sanity in the industrial setting of today's hospitals.

Author: Paul Austin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 09/01/2009
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.44h x 5.34w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780393337792
ISBN10: 0393337790
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Medical (Incl. Patients)
- Medical | Emergency Medicine
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs