Hospital: Life and Death in a Major Medical Centre

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

The doctor was once the undisputed star of the medicine show. Lately, the star part is played by the institution itself — the Hospital. Martin O’Malley, a freelance writer and nonmedical man, was given two-and-a-half years of almost unlimited access to the vast facilities of the Toronto General Hospital. His Life and Death in a Major Medical Centre is the result of the concentrated long-term attention of a fascinated layman. He says that when a doctor asked him to pass a package of suture thread and he did so unerringly and without thinking, he knew it was time to stop observing and start writing.

O’Malley’s observations included all facets of one of the largest and most advanced hospitals in North America. He became very close to some of the staff and some of the patients. Of the latter, some lived and some died. He described the excitement of the emergency department, the treatment of heart attacks, AIDS, anorexia nervosa, cancer, in vitro fertilization and more. He visited the administrative offices, the caretaking staff, the kitchens, and the multiple organ retrieval and exchange office.

Hospital describes some of the prima donnas, famed around the medical world, and the more modest working staff who plug away keeping the vast complex working; the changing relationships between doctors and the public, and between doctors and nurses; the new assertiveness among the nursing staff that is at least in part a result of nurse Susan Nelles’s ordeal following the mysterious baby deaths at the neighboring Sick Children’s Hospital. It is a fascinating and absorbing volume; once begun it is impossible to put down. But perhaps not quite the book to take with you to read in hospital.