The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital

By Audrey Young

Book Overview

Critically acclaimed author Audrey Young offers a real-life Grey's Anatomy set in Seattle's big city hospital. Opening with the view of an idealistic young doctor entering her first post-graduate job... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 157061511X
• ISBN13: 9781570615115
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Sasquatch Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

healthcare on a knife edge

Wow. I sought this book out mainly because a friend had been working night shifts in Emergency at Harborview. I came away from a fascinating read with a much better idea about just how precarious our healthcare system is. Young's ability to tell a story while educating should be honored. I can never figure out how a physician has time for a personal life. I still don't know. Young has given the non-medical reader a glimpse of carefully managed chaos. I don't know how anyone can oppose a change in our healthcare after reading this short, interesting peek into a working public hospital.

Fascinating Read

I recently finished The House of Hope and Fear and LOVED it. I was totally intrigued by the various patients' story lines--a bit like watching Grey's Anatomy (in the best, most gripping sense, not the sensational sense). And I liked how Dr. Young interwove excellent info about hospital policy, homelessness, health insurance, etc. throughout. A great way to explore complex issues about our nation's healthcare system. What I liked most was Dr. Young's openness about her frustrations with her patients and their challenges. She was honest about her own attitudes toward homeless drug addicts vs. well-healed drug addicts--surprisingly different, and I found myself nodding along, and then learning the same lessons she learned. She also recognized how myths of poverty affected patient care--sometimes in positive, sometimes negative ways. Fascinating. I found myself learning from the stories constantly along the way. It was a very human story written in layperson's terms. A very accessible and important book.

A Must Read for Anyone Interested in the Current Healthcare Debate

Audrey Young offers a compelling collection of vignettes that detail the inner workings of the Emergency Department at Harborview Hospital in Seattle. In doing so, she opens the reader's eyes to the medical plight of the city's homeless and underprivileged, and how the care they receive via the Emergency Room impacts us all. She makes a strong case for reform of our country's health care system and offers intelligent commentary on how things might be improved, all the while recognizing the difficulty of making wholesale changes in anything so important to each of us. Along the way, the reader will meet many fascinating characters on both sides of the stethoscope, and feel the compassion that care givers in urban situations often exhibit. The book is hard to put down and hard to forget. Few among us have constant contact with the indigent; their lack of medical care is one of the shames of the current medical system in this country, which is too often driven solely by profit motive. Dr. Young explains how Harborview balances the need to generate income with the need to serve everyone in the community, including those without means or insurance. It is a fascinating look at the way a hospital is run. At the book's conclusion, Dr. Young offers wisdom and insight on the ways we might improve the current situation. This book should be required reading for the folks in Congress who are shaping healthcare reform, and indeed for anyone with a serious interest in the outcome of this most important issue.