Trauma Junkie: Memoirs of an Emergency Flight Nurse

By Janice Hudson

Book Overview

"Trauma Junkie gives us a view over the flight nurse's shoulder from liftoff until the patient is delivered to the hospital and the agonizing minutes in between. These fascinating true stories are impossible to put down."
-- James M. Betts, MD, Chief of Department of Surgery and Director of Trauma Services, Children's Hospital, Oakland

"An exciting portrayal of emergency nursing."
-- Library Journal

"Fast-paced nonfiction that reads like an adventure story."
-- School Library Journal

In Trauma Junkie, readers accompany veteran flight nurse Janice Hudson as she races in response to emergency calls in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her workplace is a cramped California Shock Trauma Air Rescue (CALSTAR) helicopter in which medical personnel try to fix the human carnage wrought by shootings, accidents and natural disasters.

In this new and expanded edition, Hudson updates readers on how she and her colleagues have fared since moving on to different medical roles -- including her own battle with multiple sclerosis, which ultimately forced her to give up the job she loved.

The new Trauma Junkie also contains several previously unpublished stories, including a new addition to the lineup of "stupid human tricks" Hudson witnessed and an all-new chapter describing a call involving the most heartbreaking of patients: a child who didn't make it.

Hudson is a natural storyteller who conveys the excitement of her days with calstar -- heroic rescues, tragic deaths and the hilarious incidents that made the tension bearable -- and the deep commitment of her team to keep patients alive in the most perilous situations.

For information on California Shock Trauma Air Rescue Ambulances Services please visit www.calstar.org

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1554076145
• ISBN13: 9781554076147
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Firefly Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

If you like tv's ER, you'll love this book

I read this book a few years ago before going into nursing and I loved it. I instantly knew that I wanted to be a flight nurse. I just recently found my copy in a box and reread it now that I have been an ER nurse for over a year, and I still loved it. Janice does an excellent job of balancing the stories with humor, feeling, and reality. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it! Excellent read if you like tv's ER.

After reading this book u almost dont need field experience!

Finally another book worth five stars! This book is simply the best of its kind. Janice Hudson and Trauma Junkie surpass by far the many other Emergency Medical books I've come across. She is truly a professional and experienced Medic. She delves into the precise medical techniques of every call with great clarity. After reading this book you almost don't need field experience... Yet she tells it all in such a story book fashion, what an interesting blend. This is the kind of book I mutter a silent prayer after every chapter that it grows thicker with 300 pages. Oh well, Janice, I'll just have to wait for your next book.

FASCINATING! Well worth the time & money!

This book is in a word "Fascinating" and "Delightful Reading".

Highly recommended for all students of medicine.

Oh, humanity! This book captures it from the two extremes of people's most humane and most un-human moments. There's food for thought for those who care to partake, and an adventure in medicine for those who do not.

Moving, Funny, Enlightening

Trauma Junkie is a wonderful book that's not just a collection of emergency rescue stories, but a funny, sometimes sad, always moving account of what it is to be human--especially under the most trying circumstances. Janice Hudson skillfully conveys how the characters who populate the pages of Trauma Junkie, whether caregiver or patient, heroic or tragic, brave or flawed, are connected by their humanity --as are we all.