Vital signs [electronic resource] : stories from intensive care / Ken Hillman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hillman, Ken.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intensive care units.

Emergency medical technician and patient.

Critically ill--Care.

Critically ill.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (262 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Sydney, Australia : New South, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This gripping collection of stories about the experiences of intensive care patients, their families and carers, is about ordinary people facing terrible tragedies and the ways they cope with them. The author, an experienced intensive care clinician, takes the reader on a journey inside an intensive care unit and reveals to the public, for the first time, what really happens inside ICU. The book traces the personal experiences of ICU patients and their families and the struggles of staff providing care in this critical environment. It also offers a searing critique of the way modern healthcare can fail those in greatest need.

Contents:

1. The angel of dying

2. A colonial at Barts

3. Ageing doctors

4. The elephants' graveyard

5. The myth of CPR

6. An interesting case of blue feet

7. And the blood goes round and round

8. Orchestrating deaths

9. Father of the year

10. When things go wrong

11. The wonderful gut

12. The labels on the pack

13. The last photograph

14. Michelle and the life-support machine

15. Some ethical issues

16. When the muscles won't work

17. Pathos

18. Euphemisms

19. Spectacular successes

20. Fatima and John: the difficulty in dying

21. The worst injury of all

22. Patient-centred care

23. Getting it wrong

24. Surviving the experience

25. Dying by other names.

Notes:

"A New South book"

ISBN:

1-74223-096-2

OCLC:

647917246