Medical decisions can kill or cure, and this book documents one month in a hospital where staff are challenged by such decisions. Problems are faced daily by people like Kate Sayers, a surgeon whose dedication to her work makes any private life difficult, and whose boyfriend, an investigative journalist, opens up publicity on issues which the hospital would far rather keep quiet.
From Publishers Weekly
Setting her story in the fictional Royal Eastern Hospital in London, Britain's popular medical journalist Rayner ( Maddie ) addresses such current British public health issues, as Thatcherite cuts in funding for the National Health Service, union resentment, abortion and AIDS. Although the characters are too broadly drawn, this hefty novel is fast-paced. Forceful 35-year-old surgeon Kate Sayers is involved in unwelcome publicity provoked by an angry prospective patient who believes that Kate has delayed his much-needed operation in favor of effecting a transsexual's (frivolous) sex change. A journalistic investigation discloses that a homosexual has been denied surgery on unsubstantiated suspicion of AIDS; that material from an aborted, almost fully developed fetus has been used to treat a victim of Parkinson's disease; and that four beds in the overcrowded wards have been vacated to accommodate the Minister of Health, whose department threatens to close down the hospital. Rayner affords us a glimpse into the heart of a British hospital, but neither offers a fresh view of the problems she raises nor makes us care very much about her characters.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A novel, set in one week in a large hospital, following the various crises of the doctors and nurses, patients and administrators in a time when the future of the hospitals seems threatened.
From Publishers Weekly
Setting her story in the fictional Royal Eastern Hospital in London, Britain's popular medical journalist Rayner ( Maddie ) addresses such current British public health issues, as Thatcherite cuts in funding for the National Health Service, union resentment, abortion and AIDS. Although the characters are too broadly drawn, this hefty novel is fast-paced. Forceful 35-year-old surgeon Kate Sayers is involved in unwelcome publicity provoked by an angry prospective patient who believes that Kate has delayed his much-needed operation in favor of effecting a transsexual's (frivolous) sex change. A journalistic investigation discloses that a homosexual has been denied surgery on unsubstantiated suspicion of AIDS; that material from an aborted, almost fully developed fetus has been used to treat a victim of Parkinson's disease; and that four beds in the overcrowded wards have been vacated to accommodate the Minister of Health, whose department threatens to close down the hospital. Rayner affords us a glimpse into the heart of a British hospital, but neither offers a fresh view of the problems she raises nor makes us care very much about her characters.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A novel, set in one week in a large hospital, following the various crises of the doctors and nurses, patients and administrators in a time when the future of the hospitals seems threatened.
