| Title | : | Five Patients |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 204 |
| Publication | : | First published June 1, 1970 |
Five Patients Reviews
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Michael Crichton started his career as a medical student but veered towards writing as he became more and more dissatisfied with his chosen profession (see:
Travels for more info). Five Patients, one of his earliest works and one of his handful of non-fiction books, is not only a look at a modern (in 1970) hospital but also serves as Crichton's denunciation of some troubling problems in the practice of medicine. Crichton's research is thorough as always and some of the sections pertaining to medical history are captivating. Forty-seven years have passed so some of the stories lack relevance although some are still quite entertaining. If any of the material seems familiar, keep in mind that Crichton drew upon these experiences when he co-created the TV show ER. -
Διαβάστε και την ελληνική κριτική στις
βιβλιοαλχημείες.
Five Patients was Crichton's first non-fiction book I read this year. He wrote four in total. I read his other two last July (
Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers &
Travels) and I'm still hunting down his most rare one
Jasper Johns.
This book, as the title indicates tells the true stories of five patients at Massachusetts General Hospital, all admitted while Crichton was a medical student there.
This book tells Crichton's experiences as a doctor, the history of Massachusetts General Hospital, the general history of American medicine and hospitals,and of course, as I mentioned earlier, the personal stories of five patients their life and medical problems.
From the back cover's blurb:
«A construction worker is seriously injured in a scaffold collapse; a middle-aged dispatcher is brought in suffering from a fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; a young man nearly severs his hand in an accident; an airline traveller suffers chest pains; a mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.»
These stories, and Crichton's experiences as a medical student and doctor in general, served as the main inspiration for his drama E.R. George Clooney was a protagonist in the 1st out of 15 seasons.
Even though I'm not a fan of medical dramas and medical non-fiction, I'm a fan of Crichton, so I ended up reading this book.
It also includes a 7-pages glossary and ten pages of bibliography, showing once more Crichton's dedication on each of his works.
I can't say I loved it, but it was certainly a great experience and of course I'm glad I have one more Crichton in my possession. -
I love Michael Crichton books. He is one of my favorite authors and many of his books rank among the top couple books on my list. However, this book is not one of them. Upon reading the back cover before buying the book, I believed I picked up a thriller that combines cutting edge science and technology. I quickly found that I would be sorely disappointed.
The name of the book basically is what the plot is entirely about. It focuses on five different cases of patients at the Massachusetts General Hospital. I found that the book isn't really a true story by normal standards. What Crichton has done is use the five different cases to explain current trends in medicine. The cases presented do not provide any sort of anticipation or excitement. They are just random health anomalies or accidents which are used to helped transition into different topics of medicine.
The explanations are very in depth and well thought out, but they are not very interesting to read for the common person. Crichton does a good job at breaking down the information that is presented. Much of what he talks about is very specialized to the field of medicine, but he explains it all very clearly (although some parts are just too complex to understand without further research). Crichton also touches on some of the problems facing people and medical costs at the time of publishing. These problems still exist and it was interesting to some degree to read more in depth to some of the problems plaguing the health care system.
For the most part, this book is not your typical Michael Crichton book. It focuses more on factual evidence on the trends in medicine and hospitals rather than actual story and excitement. If you find yourself interested in a medical profession, than this book may be very interesting to you. If you are looking for a good story and excitement, this may not be the best choice. -
From the back cover: A construction worker in his fifties is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold. A middle-aged railroad dispatcher develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious. A young worker nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident. A woman traveling alone has persistent chest pain and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen. A mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.
My reactions
These five patients’ cases are used to illustrate the workings of a large academic medical center: Massachusetts General Hospital. Crichton, best known for thrillers and the TV show E.R., wrote this nonfiction explanation of how a hospital works when he was barely out of medical school himself – November 1969. I happened to get a 25th anniversary edition, which includes a “new” Author’s Note dated 1994. In that forward he writes: “When I reread the book recently, I was struck by how much in medicine has changed – and also, by how much has not changed. Eventually I decided not to revise the text, but to let it stand as a statement of what medical practice was like in the late 1960s, and how issues in health care were perceived at that time.”
Another twenty years have gone by and Crichton’s comments still ring true. Much has changed, and much remains the same. The system of training new physicians has changed little, though residents no longer have the gruelingly long hours that were the norm when Crichton was writing. Technological advances have certainly changed the way in which certain services are delivered, but third-party payers (i.e. insurance companies, including government programs such as Medicare) have much more to say about what services the patient receives and how. (A friend recently had a mastectomy as an outpatient procedure!)
So, while this work is obviously dated, I still found it interesting. -
Expected a dramatic retelling of patients' stories as described by the blurb, I was pleasantly surprised that this was more expository on themes surrounding Medicine such as history, financial costs/ insurance, technology and the hierarchy of residents. It was fascinating that a book written in the 70s had similar issues as today. Overall, a great read for me.
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This was really terrific :o) It was written in 1970 maybe (?) but his style as ever is compelling. It was super interesting to read what he envisioned as the future of medicine and hospitals. At the time he wrote this the first 'tele medicine' was being practiced at an airport terminal and computers were just starting to be used ... Fascinating book - I'm keeping it and may reread it sometime in the future
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I actually didn’t realise that Michael Crichton had ever done any medical books - admittedly he’s best known for Jurassic Park, so perhaps I only had him shelved as a sci-fi writer in my head.
For whatever reason, I’ve been rewatching ER lately, and I discovered that Crichton (who wrote the show) had also written this, an account of 5 specific patients he saw as a fourth year Harvard medical student.
It honestly reminded me of the same sort of hustle and bustle one sees in an episode of ER, so I really liked this side of the book. However, the book is very much dated - it was written in the late 60s, so much of Crichton’s coverage of contemporary issues with American healthcare are a bit anachronistic, but interesting nonetheless. -
Il germoglio da cui è nata la serie E.R. Nella realtà si tratta di un lavoro di raccolta dati molto ben romanzato.
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Not a great book for me, but if I remember correctly this was very early in his writing career.
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I'd heard several people complain that this book was outdated. Yes... that is the entire point of reading it in 2021. If you'd like a take on current medicine, read a current book (or read the foreword). Part of the charm of reading Five Patients is looking back 50 years, especially for us young folk. Not all of Crichton's predictions are accurate (who could expect them to be?), but give a solid idea of the state of medicine and its practitioners at the time.
The dividing of the book into five sections for five patients, and more importantly five different topics in medicine (general hospital history, cost of healthcare, history of surgery, technology in the medical field, and medical education, respectively), works fairly well, but Crichton fails to consistently tie each patient's story to the topic to which he devotes each chapter. I wonder how well Five Patients would read split into two different books: one telling the stories of each patient, and another a collection of essays about the state of medicine in 1969. -
I work in the healthcare field and I thought that I was getting a fiction book my Michael Crichton. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I had a nonfiction and interesting read. The funny part is that I had no clue that this author actually created the TV series ER. The story encompasses five patients, a construction worker in his fifties who is seriously injured in the collapse of a scaffold, a middle-aged railroad dispatcher who develops a high fever that makes him wildly delirious, a young worker that nearly severs his hand from his arm in an accident, a woman who while traveling alone develops persistent chest pain and is treated by a doctor on a TV screen and a mother of three who is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Five Patients has abundant detail, decent medical knowledge and insight into the health care business all told in layman’s terms.
4 Stars
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Die Vorlage für die TV-Serie "Emergency Room". Allerdings haben diese beiden Sachen - außer der Idee - nichts weiter miteinander zu tun.
Stattdessen beschreibt der Autor, der einst selbst Medizin studierte bevor er ein Bestseller-Autor wurde, wie das Leben in einer Notaufnahme ist. Zu diesem Zweck werden die Fälle von fünf verschiedenen Patienten geschildert. Neueste medizinische Entwicklungen kommen ebenso zur Sprache wie das Sozialsystem der USA. Das ganze ist in einem sehr dokumentarischen Stil geschrieben (obwohl es auch gut möglich ist, dass die Fälle in dieser Form vollständig erfunden sind.)
Zu bedenken ist: dieses Buch wurde erstmals 1970 veröffentlicht, und daher sind die "neuesten Entwicklungen" für uns gar nicht mehr so neu. -
I remember getting this from my library since a friend recommended it to me. I have always found medicine a very interesting field (only to read about, though), and my first surprise was how easy this book was to read. And the second surprise was how the statistics have been presented, to represent healthcare as an industry. It reminds the reader that although intentions may be noble, no profession exists for the sole cause of charity. It also reminds you that a hospital is not a non-profit place, and why its in the patient's best interest that it remain that way.
This book made me feel a whole lot smarter, and gave me more insight to an industry I knew nothing about but will be involved with for as long as I am alive. -
My first non-fiction work of Mister Crichton. I plowed through his fiction works in my (very) early twenties, originally borrowing them from a co-worker. After I ran through his collection, I went on to buying my own used Crichton books until I was pretty much out of options.
I picked up Five Patients at Goodwill for fifty cents on half price Saturday. Moving through it pretty quickly, I was swept away by the stories included in it, and even more so, I was taken in by just how much WORSE our health care system in America has become since Five Patients was published.
It's an eye opening read, certainly. -
Earlier Michael Crichton, an interesting read. Despite being so pop-culture, I have to admit a weakness for MC because he's a science nerd and so am I. :)
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This gives you an interesting insight into his medical years. It was interesting.
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This non-fiction is based on Crichton's experiences as a medical student at the Harvard Medical School (MGH). It pinpoints five cases that he believes are indicative of some ways of change in the field of medicine.
Ralph Orlando (Now and Then) - I couldn't understand Crichton's rationale behind picking this case in particular out of the tens of patients he describes alongside, especially because of the skimpy spotlight given to this patient, save the impersonal deliverance of the news of his death to his family members. Immediately after, the topic shifts to growth in statistical metrics in health care and how prevention is not seen as important as cure.
John O'Connor (Cost of Cure) - Crichton picks the case of John who has a fever of unknown origin that causes his enzymes and other parameters to go haywire. He walks you through the consultation of various specialists, the administration of various medicines, the excessive number of tests John had to go through for about 30 days when the fever disappears as mystically as it made its appearance. For a guy like John, with no vices and no history of illnesses, it is shocking how he has a random attack and so is the expense accrued for treatment, or in this case, diagnosis. He elucidates how and why admission into hospitals are becoming increasingly expensive and explores the legitimacy of all parts of the expenditure.
Peter Luchesi (Surgical Tradition) - After the meticulous rendition of a meticulous surgery, Crichton talks about the factors of anesthetics, antiseptics, and advancement in knowledge in the field of surgery. He also talks about how physicians and surgeons who have been disparate, and even indulge in badmouthing one another, are merging. He ends this chapter with very interesting examples related to Central Supply and Blood Bank.
Sylvia Thompson (Medical Transition) - Crichton explores automated diagnosis and looks at the prospects of automated therapy. Although the pros are bountiful, the imitation of the instinctive and experiential functions of a doctor is a challenge, which can be overcome only by capturing the way a physician thinks leaving no knowledge, intelligence and sensory parameters amiss. With increased automation, he says what will be left to the doctors in future would be the paths of research and behavioural orientations.
Edith Murphy (Patient and Doctor) - This chapter draws the relationship between doctors and patients, and most importantly between who the patients think are doctors - med students, house officers, interns, and residents. In increasing difficulty in educating medical students is discussed and methods like Socratic tradition of questioning is exemplified.
I enjoyed the book and found it very enlightening. However, I wish he had structured it better. Crichton essentially talks about multiple things like surgery, cleanliness, reordering of hospitals, etc. These could've been separated by topics to maintain the integrity of each one, as opposed to the lousy bobbing from one topic to another in a single chapter. -
It's widely known that Michael Crichton started off as a medical doctor and then transitioned into writing. In Five Patients we get his perspective on the medical field, specifically patient care and the way hospitals are run.
This book was first written in 1970 when Crichton was 28, which is important since we take a look at how medicine was done at that time, what the worries of the future were in regards to the evolution of patient care and how hospitals would run decades later. His insights really show how far ahead he can see with the way that medicine actually evolved, and those things he missed and which exist now.
We get the stories of five patients, each detailing the medicine behind their cases and also explaining the ways that the physician, surgeon, or administrator is viewing this patient. Take for example the first patient, we get to see what happens when a man is admitted into the emergency ward, how the nurses and doctors accommodate for his care, how all the other patients are displaced or accommodated, and all the social and philosophical roots and consequences of these decisions.
At this time there's not much use of computers in the care of patients or the training of doctors. Crichton at one point imagines when virtual reality will aid doctors in the practice of surgeries, at another one where patients will not be touched by a human hand but will be cared for by machines, computers, and robots. It's interesting to see how some things have evolved and others have stayed the same.
He wonders about surgeries, how sometimes surgeons would do surgeries simply to practice and not for the patient (appendectomies for example), and how he sees that at that point in time the physician's job is to make surgeries the last resort. He sees "personalized medicine" as something of the future that is highly attainable (it is!).
It amazes me how he's able to see exactly where some things will get in the future, while how others will likely stay the same.
Also, there's a fun paragraph where he's describing a computer monitor where a patient can simply "touch the screen at the appropriate place" to mark their symptoms; he's describing a touch screen, which would be developed a few years later.
Fans of Michael Crichton's fiction novels might find this book not very exciting, but to me, it was incredibly interesting since I got to see the way hospitals evolved and how patient care has changed since then. As someone who works in the field of precision medicine (the new name for personalized medicine) I find it inspiring and motivating. -
Non riesco a capire a che pubblico dovrebbe rivolgersi.
Crichton utilizza casi clinici come pretesto per parlare della sanità americana, ma è un libro che nel 2019 non è invecchiato bene.
Pubblicato in America nel 1970 e basato su casi clinici che l'autore aveva osservato durante i suoi studi era già obsoleto quando è stato rivisitato nel 1994, ma oggi è semplicemente un incrocio tra uno spaccato di storia della medicina (che però si ferma ad analizzare solo la storia del territorio, nemmeno americano, ma proprio del Massachussets - anche se ci sono vaghi accenni ad Esculapio e Ippocrate) e un reportage.
Forse sono io che ho poco interesse nell'argomento, ma non riesco ad interessarmi ai problemi della sanità americana degli anni '60 né al suo futuro, dal momento che il suo "futuro" qui analizzato è già passato e non si è realizzato (nessuno fa diagnosi al televisore, per lo meno non che io sapppia)
In generale mi sembra un libro americano scritto per gli americani.
Inoltre sarà che faccio parte della generazione abituata alla spettacolarizzazione, cresciuta con la serie tv House M.D. per cui la malattia deve sempre essere rara e astrusa e alla fine svelata, ma i casi clinici non sono nemmeno particolarmente interessanti - capisco la difficoltà di inquadrare il paziente durante un periodo storico in cui gli esami che vengono eseguiti oggi non erano nemmeno pensabili, ma quelli presi in esame sono di una semplicità disarmante, studiati come basici in un qualsiasi corso di medicina - una sepsi, una polmonite, un LES, uno schiacciamento, una rianimazione cardiaca. (Capisco sia cinico banalizzarli, dal momento che sono casi clinici di persone reali e che hanno sofferto davvero, ma onestamente è l'autore in primis a trattare i pazienti come malattie e non come persone, tranne forse per il primo caso clinico). -
(+) An interesting way of discussing problems relating to the American healthcare system and the way in which hospitals are run by using five different patients as examples – though this takes away much of the focus from the patients themselves. Although this book was written quite awhile ago now, even the updated foreword is now over 20 years old, some of the issues (particularly with insurance) are still applicable today whilst for others (like concerns over whether or not patients are able to accept tele-diagnosis as an alternative to a face-to-face consultation) it was quite interesting to read about the concerns about something that is quite widely accepted today.
(-) From the blurb (and title!), I expected more of a patient-centred book – I was interested in what happened to the construction worker injured in the scaffold collapse, perhaps more from the viewpoint of the patient instead of what effectively was a case presentation followed by a discussion about something to do with the way hospitals or medical schools are run.
Overall: Short, informative read about the state of the American healthcare system and medical schools in the 1960s. Not as patient-centred as it could have been for the title, certainly none of the "vivid real life stories" that I'd expected, and I was disappointed that it didn't really live up to its summary. This is definitely Crichton the medical school student, not the thriller-writing genius of Jurassic Park. It was OK: 2.5 stars. -
This book was an interesting one because it’s Crichton writing about medicine and sharing some of the things that he learned from working at a hospital. As well as being the guy behind Jurassic Park, Crichton also created ER, and this book shows that he knew what he was talking about when he did that.
True, the book was written in the late sixties and so medicine has changed quite a lot since then, but then there are also a surprising number of places in which it hasn’t really changed at all. Given that I’ve worked with a client on a book about the future of healthcare, it was interesting to take a look back at the past, as well as at what Crichton thought the future was likely to look like way back then.
A lot of the technologies and the ideas that he talks about are still very much hot topics today. For example, he covered some early examples of telemedicine, which is essentially when a doctor and a patient communicate via video chat. Back at the end of the 60s, the technology was super limited and the consultations were in black and white, but I was fascinated by the fact that they were happening at all.
The title comes from the core concept, which is that Crichton follows the stories of five different patients. Fascinating. -
I picked this book up because I'm a big fan of the show ER and Michael Crichton is the Creator. The book is not a novel like I had originally thought but I still enjoyed the book. It tells you the story of 5 different patients coming into the emergency room of a teaching hospital in Boston. The cases set up a scenario and Michael goes on to tell about how much medicine has changed in a short period of time and yet how some things took an extremely long time to be accepted. It also points to downfalls that could effect the future of hospitals. The part I found most interesting is that the book was written in 1969 and while not published until the 90s much is still the same and yet much has progressed. Also he foresees many things that have now occurred or are currently being debated. A very interesting book if you are interested in the inner workings of a hospital.
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3.5
This was a fairly interesting read about the inner workings of Massachusetts General Hospital, Which also happens to be a teaching hospital. The information is somewhat dated, considering it was written in 1970, but there were also some interesting parts related to early Tele-Health visits and fairly accurate predictions about the future of medicine and hospital care. I do have one significant complaint though. The book , at least my copy, is marketed as the story of five patients experience at MGH. However, the patient's stories are simply a backdrop for explaining the methodology of diagnosis and treatment. Thankfully, I found those explanations intriguing, even though, that was not the original reason I was interested in this book. -
Five Patients by Michael Crichton
Paperback
Read 12/10/2020-12/14/2020
Three stars
I saw this book in a LFL and thought I’d give it a try. I’ve read other Crichton books and the blurb on the back made me thing this would be an interesting read.
I was wrong.
The parts about the five patients are great! He says in the forward that the stories are just stories at random and are medical anomalies or miracles. The issue I have is the filler between the stories. Crichton talks a lot about of the procedures and other happenings in the medical field and ways they are problematic and ways they can be improved. And if you don’t have an interest in the medical field, it’s just boring. There’s a lot of larger terms (there is even a glossary) and I found my mind wandering until I got back to another patient story.
I did find some things interesting such as the things that are still similar in the medical field and how fast some of the procedures had been developed. I laughed when they said having medical appointments via closed-circuit TV could be a thing of the future (especially in 2020).
For the most part, this was a quick read but I only give it 3 stars because I wanted more medical drama and less facts about the medical community. -
"Ralph Orlando, un lavoratore ferito dal crollo di un'impalcatura; John O'Connor, un uomo di mezza età che delira in preda a una febbre dall'origine sconosciuta; Peter Luchesi, un ragazzo che dopo un incidente rischia di perdere un braccio; Sylvia Thompson, che nel corso di un viaggio aereo inizia a provare un lancinante dolore al petto; Edith Murphy, madre di tre bambini, con le caviglie e le ginocchia che si gonfiano misteriosamente. "
Attraverso cinque casi, rielabporazioni fedeli di pazineti davverp osservati da Chricton nella sua cariera medica, il defunto romanziere ci mostra le vie che la medicina avrebbe potuto prendere, e gli sviluppi della stessa nell'arco dei secoli.
