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Title details for Tornado of Life by Jay Baruch - Available

Tornado of Life

A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER

by Jay Baruch
ebook
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“BRIEF, TOUCHING” STORIES FROM THE ER: An emergency room doctor shows how empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care (New York Times Book Review).
To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor’s most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won’t work if doctors get the story wrong. When caring for others can feel like venturing into uncharted territory without a map, empathy, creativity, imagination, and thinking like a writer become the cornerstones of clinical care. In Tornado of Life, ER physician Jay Baruch shares these struggles in a series of short, powerful, and affecting essays that invite the reader into stories rich with complexity and messiness.
Patients come to the ER with lives troubled by scales of misfortune that have little to do with disease or injury. ER doctors must be problem-finders before they are problem-solvers. Cheryl, for example, whose story is a chaos narrative of “and this happened, and then that happened, and then, and then and then and then,” tells Baruch she is “stuck in a tornado of life.” What will help her, and what will help Mr. K., who seems like a textbook case of post-combat PTSD but turns out not to be? Baruch describes, among other things, the emergency of loneliness (invoking Chekhov, another doctor-writer); his own (frightening) experience as a patient; the patient who demanded a hug; and emergency medicine during COVID-19. These stories often end without closure or solutions. The patients are discharged into the world. But if they’re lucky, the doctor has listened to their stories as well as treated them.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 30, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780262370103

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780262370103
      • File size: 362 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2022

      Baruch (Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers), an emergency room physician and author of two award-winning short story collections, writes a book of essays about his experiences in the ER and his philosophy of patient care. The book showcases his belief that the power of story is just as important to doctors as it is to patients. However, Baruch writes, chronic underfunding and understaffing make it difficult for doctors to make the time to hear patients' stories, to read between the lines. Written during the pandemic, the book includes a couple of essays about working with COVID patients, but COVID is not the full focus. This is not an overtly political book about the state of the health system; it is an homage to the people Baruch has treated, failed, and helped. His ability to tell a story is what makes it so compelling. Tender, thoughtful and, at times, hard to read, it focuses on a doctor doing his best to truly hear patients, while constantly questioning whether his efforts are enough. VERDICT Beautifully written with a different take on life, this is recommended for any collection.--Jane Keenan

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 5, 2022
      ER physician Baruch (What’s Left Out) recounts in this unflinching essay collection the professional challenges he’s encountered, both pre-Covid and from the worst of the pandemic. “Backstory” is a vivid account of Baruch working to establish trust with a patient who refuses treatment, “Dr. Douchebag” sees the author deal with antagonistic patients, and “Why Medicine Needs More Not-Knowing” is a case for more humility in the profession: “Not knowing is a muscle that can become stronger and stabilized only through training and interrogation of our thinking process.” “Compassion at the Crossroads,” meanwhile, considers the tough decisions that must be made in a triage situation:“My compassion must extend to them as well,” Baruch writes of patients in the waiting room. “They’re not in rooms, but they’re in our home. They have names and faces and concerns of their own.” Baruch has a knack for narrative and writes in a refined prose, and many entries, such as two concerning domestic violence victims who won’t say that they’re in danger, are tough to forget. Fans of Thomas Fisher’s The Emergency: A Year of Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER should give this a look.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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