County
Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital
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Narrated by:
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Bronson Pinchot
About this listen
The amazing tale of County is the story of one of America's oldest and most unusual urban hospitals. From it's inception as a "Poor House" dispensing free medical care to indigents, Chicago's Cook County Hospital has been both a renowned teaching hospital and the healthcare provider of last resort for the city's uninsured. County covers more than thirty years of its history, beginning in the late 1970s when the author began his internship, to the "Final Rounds" when the enormous iconic Victorian hospital building was replaced and hundreds of former trainees gathered to bid it an emotional farewell.
Ansell writes of the hundreds of doctors who went through the rigorous training process with him, sharing his vision of saving the world and of resurrecting a hospital on the verge of closing. County is about people, from Ansell’s mentors, including the legendary Quentin Young, to the multitude of patients whom he and County’s medical staff labored to diagnose and heal. It is a story about politics, from contentious union strikes to battles against “patient dumping”, and public health, depicting the AIDS crisis and the opening of County’s HIV/AIDS clinic, the first in the city.
Finally, it is about a young man’s medical education in urban America, a coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of race, segregation and poverty.
David A. Ansell, MD., a Chicago-based physician and health activist, has been an internal-medicine physician since training at Cook County Hospital in the late 1970s, where he spent seventeen years. Now chief medical officer at Rush University Medical Center, he sees patients, teaches, volunteers as a doctor at a Chicago free clinic, and participates in medical missions to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
©2011 David Ansell; Introduction 2011 by Quentin Young (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying.
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Ugh, so boring
- By Maranto on 05-13-19
By: Ann Neumann
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Five Days at Memorial
- Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- By: Sheri Fink
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs.
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Five Days in Hell/Years in Purgatory
- By Cynthia on 09-15-13
By: Sheri Fink
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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Beating Back the Devil
- By: Maryn McKenna
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The universal instinct is to run from an outbreak of disease. These doctors run toward it. They always keep a bag packed. They seldom have more than 24 hours before they are dispatched. They are told only their country of destination and the epidemic they will tackle when they get there.
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Interesting Stuff - Only criticism is pacing
- By Tim on 07-23-05
By: Maryn McKenna
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Do No Harm
- Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
- By: Henry Marsh
- Narrated by: Jim Barclay
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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With compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached surgeons, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again.
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Uneven
- By Scott on 06-02-15
By: Henry Marsh
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Healing Hearts
- A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
- By: Kathy Magliato
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of fewer than a dozen female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group - those surgeons who perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who also calls herself a wife and mother.
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Healing Hearts
- By Jean on 01-14-12
By: Kathy Magliato
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Inferno
- A Doctor's Ebola Story
- By: Steven Hatch MD
- Narrated by: Steven Hatch MD
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Steven Hatch first came to Liberia in November 2013 to work at a hospital in Monrovia. Six months later, several of the physicians Dr. Hatch had mentored and served with were dead or barely clinging to life, and Ebola had become a world health emergency. Hundreds of victims perished each week; whole families were destroyed in a matter of days; so many died so quickly that the culturally taboo practice of cremation had to be instituted to dispose of the bodies.
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Good story, spoiled by politics.
- By Roman Vogel on 07-22-17
By: Steven Hatch MD
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Critical Care
- A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between
- By: Theresa Brown
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 5 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In her former career as an English professor, Theresa Brown had been shielded from the harsh reality of death. That all changed the day she decided to become an oncology nurse. In Critical Care, Theresa writes powerfully and honestly about her first year on the hospital floor. With great compassion and a disarming sense of humor, she shares the trials and triumphs of her patients and comes to realize that caring for a patient means much more than simply treating a disease.
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Excellent all the way around!
- By Susan on 10-12-17
By: Theresa Brown
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Bellevue
- Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital
- By: David Oshinsky
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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David Oshinsky, whose last book, Polio: An American Story, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize, chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.
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Fascinating
- By Jean on 12-14-16
By: David Oshinsky
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Rise and Shine
- The Path to Life
- By: Simon Lewis
- Narrated by: Kelsey Grammer
- Length: 8 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Crushed between a truck and a tree, Simon and his wife were both pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident. Enduring a broken skull, jaw, arms, clavicle and pelvis, followed by a coma, Simon lives to tell his remarkable journey from tragedy to triumph.
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Amazing opportunities for healing!
- By Leah on 04-29-17
By: Simon Lewis
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Heart
- A History
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As cardiologist and best-selling author Sandeep Jauhar tells in The Heart, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ.
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Fascinating Insight
- By Ironcharles on 10-27-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
What listeners say about County
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- GAB
- 06-08-22
Very telling
A gross analysis and microscopic diagnosis of the cancer of politics of health care to the minorities living in America
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- Terry
- 11-22-11
A great view of County
I found the very well done. From having lived in Chicago and some understanding of County the book was a great read. David brought to light thinks I had no idea about.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Mark
- 11-22-11
Excellent, eye-opening!
Insightful glimpse into the difficulties of balancing health care and dwindling insurance coverage. 'Will open your eyes to what's going on in most major cities in the U.S.
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2 people found this helpful
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- IowaGreyhound
- 11-11-20
Historic look at Chicago County Hospital
Helps the reader understand the inequality in medicine in the US and how other races and religions were mistreated. The narrator is OK, but several times he spoke so low that at top volume I could not understand hi..
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- Michelle
- 05-28-21
Highly recommend
Intense. It is quite disturbing hearing some of these stories, but very good for the author to bring these to public attention. While Cook County Hospital has come a long way since the 80s, a lot of these problems still do exist there and other public hospitals. Thank you to the author and all the Cook County Hospital staff that have fought to provide better care and outcomes there over the years. This was very well-written and narrated: I really could picture the scene and feel the despair on the wards as the author described them. Great listen for medical and non-medical folks alike.
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- Heather Hawley
- 01-21-22
Thank you, Dr. Ansell.
As a white woman raised in rural VA with good health care throughout my life, I realize now that I failed to see the injustices outside of my small town life, specifically regarding race. My family did not have a lot of money but I did have access to good health care here in VA, even on Medicaid. This book leaves me wondering, even from Small Town, U.S.A., if there were racial injustices in medical care. I do not remember, nor did I hear of any, but I very well could have been oblivious to the fact. Plus, I was a white kid with a white family. People most likely would refrain from sharing that info with me. 1. I was a child when I had Medicaid and racial inequality was something I had never heard of at the time, and 2. I grew up around white people. I went to school with black people but my neighborhood and friends outside of school were white and it never occurred to us to have this discussion about our own hometown, even in high school and college. However, I also was not welcomed by the rich kids and did not have wealthy friends. My clique, albeit white, was lower middle class. This book intrigues me enough to open that chapter with my childhood friends and family to see if they paid attention to the racial inequality in our health care, quality, timeliness, ability to be seen, etc. My guess is that even in a small town, it existed; I'm only sorry that I failed to recognize it. Thanks for bringing this heartbreaking issue to light, Dr. Ansell and thank you for your service at County Hospital.
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- Katherine
- 07-02-24
Good read
Liked the full picture of the politics and medical perspective and reader voice. Enjoyed it very Much
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- Cheryl E Ligon
- 11-19-11
Very Accurate account
I was in nursing school a little before the dates in the book. I attended City #2 Hospital in St. Louis, Mo. Homer G. Phillips. His account of Cook County Hospital is very accurate of the time. I saw many of the same things. Politics were the same all over the country, I could not get into the schools in Michigan where I lived. I am African American, we were not admitted to the schools there. After graduation I worked at the City Hospital in Detroit. Private hospitals did not accept minorities unless they could produce an insurance card. The rooms in the hospitals were then segregated.
He is right on target.Listening was a flash back for me.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Arturo Aguirre
- 01-20-18
I would like to meet the author
Being a denizen of Chicago who now lives on the south side and having been a student at the Fantus outpatient clinic, I really connected with this story. It’s part autobiography, part clinical, part love story and part political activist novel. It’s a great read if you want to learn an important piece of Chicago’s history as well as a piece of the history of our national healthcare system.
I hope to see an addendum to the book.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Eileen
- 11-22-11
Outstanding
Outstanding story of the history of Cook County Hospital, Chicago, Il. Not just a lesson in it's history but also a lesson in the Public Health Care System. It's a system that no matter how awful or beautiful the building is or the medical caretakers are, it's a system that does not work. Obama and his cronies should read this book before they shove their health care down our throats. The care at Cook Co. is the best IF you can get it and if you live long enough to get an appointment or make it through the hours or even months of waiting it takes to get seen in a Public Health Care System. Great lesson, great book, and Great Doctors at Cook Co. Hospital.
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1 person found this helpful