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Ebook179 pages3 hours
Direct Red: A Surgeon's View of Her Life-or-Death Profession
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
In this powerful and sometimes shocking account, a surgeon reveals her experience of hospital life with rare frankness.
In her mid-twenties, Gabriel Weston - an arts graduate with no scientific qualification beyond high school-level biology - decided to become a surgeon. She enrolled at night school, then went through many years of medical school and surgical training.
Now in her late thirties, she has achieved her ambition and is working as a surgeon in a British hospital. "But I have never quite managed to shake off the feeling that I am an imposter,"she says. "Even when operating, it sometimes seems like I am on the outside looking in."
Direct Red is the result of those observations. It is a superbly written, startlingly raw account of her experience of life in a hospital. All her own doubts, mistakes, and incongruous triumphs are faithfully recorded. It is also a revealing and at times chilling account of what she sees around her. The world of surgery is secret and closed - or was until now.
Excerpt
I knew that this man needed to be opened up immediately. I phoned the on-call consultant, offering to meet him in theatre.
"Not so fast," he objected. "You youngsters are always in such a hurry." When he finally did concede that we needed to go to theatre, he picked up a coffee on the way.
Physiology forced pace on the situation: once we cut the man open, we were confronted with the sight of the hollow cavern of the patient’s abdomen filling with blood as quickly as a basin fills with water.
This consultant did not have a clue what to do; didn’t know the simplest emergency measures. He dressed his incompetence in a mannered slowness of action. It took him almost an hour to admit he wasn’t coping, at which point he shouted at the scrub nurse: "Get me another surgeon! Any surgeon!"
The night taught me the paramount value of a quick response.
In her mid-twenties, Gabriel Weston - an arts graduate with no scientific qualification beyond high school-level biology - decided to become a surgeon. She enrolled at night school, then went through many years of medical school and surgical training.
Now in her late thirties, she has achieved her ambition and is working as a surgeon in a British hospital. "But I have never quite managed to shake off the feeling that I am an imposter,"she says. "Even when operating, it sometimes seems like I am on the outside looking in."
Direct Red is the result of those observations. It is a superbly written, startlingly raw account of her experience of life in a hospital. All her own doubts, mistakes, and incongruous triumphs are faithfully recorded. It is also a revealing and at times chilling account of what she sees around her. The world of surgery is secret and closed - or was until now.
Excerpt
I knew that this man needed to be opened up immediately. I phoned the on-call consultant, offering to meet him in theatre.
"Not so fast," he objected. "You youngsters are always in such a hurry." When he finally did concede that we needed to go to theatre, he picked up a coffee on the way.
Physiology forced pace on the situation: once we cut the man open, we were confronted with the sight of the hollow cavern of the patient’s abdomen filling with blood as quickly as a basin fills with water.
This consultant did not have a clue what to do; didn’t know the simplest emergency measures. He dressed his incompetence in a mannered slowness of action. It took him almost an hour to admit he wasn’t coping, at which point he shouted at the scrub nurse: "Get me another surgeon! Any surgeon!"
The night taught me the paramount value of a quick response.
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Reviews for Direct Red
Rating: 3.3387096096774194 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
31 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very good read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I picked this up on a whim, out of a bag of incoming books at the shop, because I've rather enjoyed other 'medical memoirs' I've read in the past. I find them fascinating, perhaps because the medical profession is such a world apart - men and women caring for every kind of person in every kind of difficult situation, often at absolutely critical moments in their lives. Gabriel Weston's surgical memoir is definitely the best of the bunch so far, and I can see why it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in 2009.Weston is a surgeon in a big-city English hospital. Her book is divided into short, deftly-titled chapters, providing themes for her anecdotes and creating an interesting structure. 'Speed', for example, illustrates the importance of quick thinking and rapid action in saving lives; 'Hierarchy' delves into the power relations of a surgical ward, and 'Children' covers her time in the paediatric emergency room and children's department. Theming each section allows Weston to move around in time and to make important points about the surgical profession without muddling her narrative, and it really worked for me.This is a beautifully written book that rings with the precise and matter-of-fact detail that a surgeon's eye is trained to notice. Weston's disclaimer points out that no one character or situation here is 'true' - but I don't think it really matters, because at the book's heart is a thoroughly authentic and experienced voice. There were some heartbreaking moments and some charming ones, some lyrical descriptions and some blisteringly earthy ones. Far from being frightened by the graphic surgical scenes, I found myself reassured by how much the human body can withstand, and how much a surgical team can do to mend it when it is broken. Highly recommended - though if you're squeamish you should probably give this one a miss!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53.0 out of 5 stars Something of a letdown..., July 26, 2009By Kathleen Wagner "*Mitakuye Oyasin or We are A... (SWPA) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME) Reading this book will give you an idea of what a young woman training to be a doctor in England faces. It is clear that bias against woman doctors has not yet been completely eliminated, especially among older, male doctors.This book is a collection of the experiences of a young woman who enters medical school and the situations she faced and how she deals with them. Weston tells of dealing with children, emergencies, death,and more, and her own personal grow as she makes her way through.The stories are brief and informative. The author mentions that it was her intent to depersonalize the stories in order to honor the privacy of her patients. Some of the experiences she relates are interesting and poignant.In fact most of them are, yet there is something missing. The approach is matter of fact to the extreme. Some descriptions are somewhat graphic, but no more than need be to get the point across and give an accurate picture of the experience.To me the most interesting part of this short book deals with Weston's own personal growth. I find it hard to describe exactly what it was that I found lacking, but there was indeed something missing here. Bland is the word I can best use to describe this book. It held my attention long enough to finish reading, but I was not sorry to put it down when I had.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Direct Red is an eminently readable collection of stories drawn from Gabriel Weston’s experiences while training and working as a surgeon in the UK.The opening page finds her near collapse from exhaustion (and tedium) while in her seventh hour of assisting on an OR case. Desperate to not admit vulnerability in front of her colleagues, she resorts to a private mantra -- recalling the names of tissue stains that fascinated her back in medical school: Methylene blue, Acridine orange, Malachite green, Tyrian purple … Direct red. This list rouses her back to clarity in the OR and launches her series of stories set at other precipices of vulnerability, represented by theme-based chapters: Speed, Sex, Death, Voices, Beauty, Hierarchy, Territory, Emergencies, Ambition, Help, Children, Appearances, Changes, and Home.The book’s description likens Weston to Atul Gawande (Complications, Better), but while they both write patient-centered stories of medicine and surgery, their content and styles differ markedly. Gawande is a master essayist, using the clinical case as a jumping-off point for deep explorations of the science, history and ethics of practice. Weston is a compelling storyteller whose laser-focused patient-doctor vignettes are full of tension, emotion and keen observation.Despite having spent my career in healthcare, the book surprised and informed me, and I devoured it in a day.