Doubting their choices, working 90 hours a week, lacking sleep, surviving on a diet of bad food and black coffee, each must learn to work in the understaffed, underfunded, and deteriorating hospital taking care of critically ill patients; for a system demanding they be constantly overworked if they want to become the doctors they promised themselves they would be.
Within this brutal system, Sam finds a mentor in Fish - his senior resident and the only one to tell him the actual rules to survive:
• Everyone will try to kill your patient, except you.
• It's OK to be wrong, but never unsure.
• Rebels are shot at dawn.
Fish should know. He had been through it just a year before. But would any of them make it out unscathed?
Set in the 1970's, this raw portrait of the birth of emergency medicine bears the roots of many of the problems underlying our broken medical system and our system of training doctors. Ones that have only progressively worsened since that time. But...
If you can persevere...
If you really follow Fish's rules...
Maybe you too can survive THE COUNTY.
About the Author
Absolutely riveting!
The County by Zane Horowitz is a riveting look at the training doctors receive after they graduate from medical school. This fictionalized version of the lives and experiences of a cohort of four young doctors is set in the 1970s at a county hospital in Central City, California, and reflects the conditions in the community and the state of medicine at that time. The four interns are an engaging and diverse group, each with their unique personalities, hopes, dreams, and private crosses to bear. I found myself completely caught up in their trials, hoping for them to succeed.
While Dr. Sam Wyatt, one of the four new doctors, is the main character, the story also unfolds from the perspective of his three cohort members and the residents who are maybe a year or two or more down the road from them in their training and critical to their progress through the hospital’s internship program. His characters come alive with their individual backstories and, for some, what they have to handle in their personal lives. The medical cases they face cover a wide range of illnesses and injuries and make for very suspenseful reading, as many of their patients are literally fighting for their lives. The term “medical practice” also took on a whole new meaning for me. In creating the medical scenarios, the author subtly inserts symptoms, diagnostic testing, a variety of possible diagnoses, and little bits of medical history as well.
The pace of the training and schedule is grueling and unforgettable, with the newly-minted doctors frequently on their feet for much longer than their 24-hour shifts. Also, as the hospital is in a less savory neighborhood, the doctors themselves face dangerous situations involving an often-desperate clientele.
The author’s writing style is easy to read, comfortable, and immersive. Before I realized it, I was about halfway through the book before looking up and taking a break. I look forward to reading more by this writer.
I recommend THE COUNTY to fiction readers, especially those
who enjoy a medical story or setting.
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