In Stitches by Dr Nick Edwards (Friday Books, £7.99 pb)

This controversial book by an A&E doctor dissects the harsh realities of NHS reform at the frontline of emergency healthcare. Dr Nick Edwards (a pseudonym) has little time for the bureaucracy, rhetoric and target culture of the ‘new’ NHS. He emphasises that 98% of the blog entries that make up this book were written in under four hours.

Originally written to let off steam at the end of a shift, these mini-essays vary from personal accounts of helping people in crisis to satirical lists (for example, of acronyms for types of patient) and impassioned critiques of current NHS policies. The pressures and conflicts of A&E are much in evidence, as are the varied pathologies of patient behaviour. Some of these anecdotes are clinically enlightening; some are tragic; some are hilarious.

Some particularly memorable passages deal with: why walls should be given ASBOs; the male patient whose ‘accident’ with a mobile phone required surgery; how hospital funds are diverted from frontline care to extra management whose purpose is to drive ‘efficiency’; a long New Year’s Eve shift in A&E; the elderly patient with an original definition of ‘health visitor’; and why people so often harm themselves.

Reading this book brings to mind George Bernard Shaw’s comment: Life does not stop being serious when people laugh or stop being funny when people die. For the healthcare sales representative, A&E doctors may not be direct customers – trust procurement managers are likely to purchase for them – but they are the end users of many life-saving products. This book will tell you much about their experience, their motives and the challenges they face.

www.thefridayproject.co.uk

On Target special book offer

Southbank Publishing are offering a free copy of In Stitches by Dr Nick Edwards to the first 4 On Target readers who answer this question correctly: Who plays Charlie Fairhead in the BBC drama ‘Casualty’?

Send your answer to
joel.lane@healthpublishing.co.uk.