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Five Patients

michael crichton

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ER has become the most successful television series in the world since Charlie's Angels. Michael Crichton created the series from his own experiences as a medical doctor in the emergency rooms, operating rooms and wards of Massachusetts General Hospital. Five Patients is Michael Crichton's true account of the real life dramas so vividly portrayed in ER. 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.

204 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1,1970
Places
massachusetts, 

This edition

Format
204 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published
January 13, 1989 by Ballantine Books
ISBN
ASIN
Language
English
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About the author

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michael crichton

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Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was one of the most successful novelists of his generation, admired for his meticulous scientific research and fast-paced narrative. He graduated summa cum laude and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School in 1969. His first novel, Odds On (1966), was written under the pseudonym John Lange and was followed by seven more Lange novels. He also wrote as Michael Douglas and Jeffery Hudson. His novel A Case of Need won the Edgar Award in 1969. Popular throughout the world, he has sold more than 200 million books. His novels have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and thirteen have been made into films.

Michael Crichton died of lymphoma in 2008. He was 66 years old.

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Community Reviews

Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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33(33%)
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100 reviews All reviews
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vanillaine
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Took a while to get into it, but I felt like from the third case to the fifth, the stories and the additional information about hospital technique and teaching practices were much more engrossing even while filled with semi-outdated medical jargon. For a nonfiction book specifically about 1960s medical procedure it was very good.
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xxawesomelucyxx
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Not what I expected from the title. It is about the medical and hospital scene in 1970's America. It is interesting that there are many things that haven't actually changed in the way hospitals and medical treatment function.
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Dundeee
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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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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a-o-z-o-r-a
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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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.
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DogPark69
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Factual expose of the US health system. Sadly as relevant now as it was at the time it was written.
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Drangu5_Khan
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Questo libro parla di medicina d'urgenza, ma è del 1969 ed è questo a renderlo incredibilmente interessante. Leggendolo non ho potuto fare a meno di pensare che se mi catapultassero in quell'epoca non saprei fare il mio lavoro. Non saprei dispensare terapie senza eco, senza tac, senza un sacco di esami del sangue indispensabili. Eppure, la Boston del 1969 aveva un reparto di telemedicina per visitare i pazienti dell'aeroporto, tramite una telecamera in bianco e nero, un microfono, e un fonendo collegato a un medico a miglia di distanza. Se siete interessati alle trasformazioni storiche della medicina è il libro per voi.
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ladyminnie2
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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A little dated (this was first published in 1970) but still provided some interesting insights. Was intriguing to see the use of closed circuit TV medical consultations which, as far I know, have not really taken off since.
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Uutama
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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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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