The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales of the Modern Hospital - Hardcover

Medicine, the modern sorcerer's apprentice, has unleashed a flood of technological advances without regard for the patient, in Tisdale's view; she charges that "the sick and suffering are forgotten so that their illnesses can be healed." A nurse in Oregon, Tisdale maintains that the condition of the ill and dying in our society is unnatural: they are held in a state of surrender, not permitted to understand their circumstances but merely to submit. The medical profession responds to their human needs only by the application of more machinery, asserts the author. Tisdale takes readers through a neonatal intensive-care unit, a kidney dialysis center, a burn unit, a surgery and a cancer ward, in chapters that will make the weak of stomach queasy. Important reading for those in the healing professions, the book will also interest anyone who has had a serious illness.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tisdale focuses on several special units in hospitals that have made remarkable advances in the last ten years. The neonatal intensive care unit, kidney dialysis unit, and the burn unit are just three of these areas. She looks at the totally dependent patients that modern medicine has created; but for the dramatic advances in medicine, these patients would be dead. Therein lies the central concern of Tisdale's book: have we gone too farand do we know when to give up the fight to prolong the life of the horribly burned patient or the totally machine dependent premature infant? Tisdale's questions and observations are thought-provoking and often controversial. Recommended for all subject collections. Lindia Morgan Davis, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.