Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases
    Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases
    Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases
    Audiobook7 hours

    Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases

    Written by Cory Franklin, MD

    Narrated by John Pruden

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Filled with stories of strange medical cases and unforgettable patients culled from a thirty-year career in medicine, Cook County ICU offers listeners a peek into the inner workings of a hospital. Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences, including the deadly Chicago heatwave of 1995, treating the first AIDS patients in the country before the disease was diagnosed, the nurse with rare Muchausen syndrome, the only surviving ricin victim, and the professor with Alzheimer's hiding the effects of the wrong medication. Surprising, darkly humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes tragic, these stories provide a big-picture look at how the practice of medicine has changed over the years, making it a must-listen for patients, doctors, and anyone with an interest in medicine.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 22, 2016
    ISBN9781515974314
    Cook County ICU: 30 Years of Unforgettable Patients and Odd Cases

    Related to Cook County ICU

    Related audiobooks

    United States History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Works In Progress

      Sep 1, 2020

      Works In Progress
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Vanishing Midwives

      Oct 30, 2017

      The Vanishing Midwives
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Health Of The Lion

      Feb 12, 2021

      The Health Of The Lion
      6 min read

    • Article

      Everything You Wanted To Know About The History Of Medicine

      Jan 21, 2021

      Q: What would you say are the three biggest turning points in the history of medicine? A: Every historian will have different thoughts on this, but I would say inoculation for smallpox, which made its way to Europe and the US in the 18th century. T

      6 min read

    • Article

      The People’s Doctor

      Sep 1, 2023

      The People’s Doctor
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Face Of Change

      Oct 25, 2019

      The Face Of Change
      14 min read

    • Article

      A Twist On Charles Dickens: He Was A Public Health Pioneer Too

      Jul 5, 2018

      A new museum exhibit in London reveals a hidden side of the literary great. It turns out he was prolific not just as a novelist, but also as a promoter of public health and medical discoveries.

      5 min read

    • Article

      The 35 Best Health and Science Books to Read This Summer

      Jun 21, 2017

      Hopefully you have time carved out for some rest and relaxation this summer, but whatever will you read? We here at STAT have you covered.

      12 min read

    • Article

      10 Great Health and Science Books From 2017

      Dec 26, 2017

      Need a good read to take you into the new year? Check out our list of the top health and science books of 2017.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Britain’s Medical Commissars

      Jan 31, 2019

      Britain’s Medical Commissars
      2 min read

    • Article

      Healers In The Hell Of The Gulag

      Apr 11, 2024

      Books about the gulag have overwhelmingly focused on excavating the stories of those imprisoned in the Soviet Union's vast labour camp system from the 1930s to the 1950s. Or, they have set about uncovering the individuals responsible for the sufferin

      2 min read

    • Article

      How Doctors Use Poetry

      Sep 27, 2018

      One part of the Hippocratic Oath, the vow taken by physicians, requires us to “remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.”  When I, a

      5 min read

    • Article

      This Pandemic Isn’t Over

      Jun 9, 2021

      This Pandemic Isn’t Over
      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 18, 2021

      Letters
      3 min read

    • Article

      Wielders Of The Knife

      Mar 1, 2022

      Wielders Of The Knife
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lessons From Leprosy For Coronavirus: Quarantine And Isolation Can Backfire

      Feb 7, 2020

      On thing the history of leprosy tells us: When you restrict people's freedoms, they go underground, and fail to seek treatment.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Evacuation Air

      Sep 23, 2019

      Evacuation Air
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Quarantine Next Door

      Aug 2, 2014

      The Quarantine Next Door
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 5, 2018

      In his Winter 2018 cover story (“Here’s the Beef with Chicken from China”), James McWilliams reports on concerns about the safety of chicken imported from China. Here in Europe, there are similar concerns about chicken produced in the United States.

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cook County ICU

    4.5/5

    187 ratings15 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I enjoyed listening to this book. Good sense of humor and interesting stories.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed the stories!! The author has a great point about HIPAA at the end .
    • 1/5
      I feel like the book has the emotional intelligence of a 10 year old. No depth to any of the stories.
    • 3/5
      The last few chapters were very thought provoking . Be sure to read to the end
    • 5/5
      Really enjoyed this book, the author is funny and passionate. Excellent insight into the medical profession.
    • 5/5
      A very down to earth look at a physicians journey through medical school and then following his career journey through his work at the largest not for profit hospital. The author is very candid and doesn’t take himself too seriously. Enjoyed the narrators voice too.
    • 3/5
      ok, read trauma room two, its a much better read.
    • 5/5
      In a word...FANTASTIC!!!! Loved all his stories and how they were delivered. The book also provided a lot of food for thought
    • 5/5
      A fascinating read for those of us who are not part of the medical professionals, more specifically, of the hospital medical professionals.

      The author gives an insider's account of what he encountered during his years as a doctor in Chicago's Cook County ICU. Far from being a boring or pedantic narration, the book paints a humane way of receiving and treating patients. It is not by all means, a rosy picture, describing all sorts of ills and harms that can befall a human being, but manages to avoid the gory, sensationalist aspect it could have easily taken.

      I loved that doctor Cory Franklin, not only shared his experience through striking anecdotes which he has either heard of or experienced, but he also illustrated them with either literary quotes or lyrics from certainly his favorite songs.

      It's a genuine advocacy for a patient-centered medical care which we would do well to take heed of as it seems more and more lacking in this day and age.
    • 5/5
      As a medical professional, I love this book since I myself could relate to the era of medicine that has gone by and sadly replaced by this billion dollar money making industry that it has become which does not always (or usually) have the patients' best interest at heart. It remains very difficult to motivate the younger generation of doctors to "do better by/ for their patients" and not just for their wallets or the bureaucracy that their entangled in.
    • 5/5
      Entertaining and informative. This is actually the first audio book that I've listened to the whole way through. The reader was very engaging and made the situations come to life with his spirited storytelling. Highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      I found no particular favorite part of the book. I had wanted both the speaker and the stories to be warmer, more personable but they weren’t. This lack may have occurred because I’ve been listening to hospital stories since the 1940’s on radio’s General Hospital. Those stories were emotionally involved but these seemed to be read perfectly but with none of my emotional response occurring. I did gain a lot of new insights and new shareable trivia. Just a good read that held my interest.
    • 5/5
      Life in a famed county hospital of Chicago, quite interesting. It's a fascinating story from a doctor's point of view. He covers thoughts from a doctor fresh out of medical school and thoughts from the perspective of someone who has had a long career as a medical practitioner.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It was like having your own TV medical drama without all of the over-the-top or bad acting. Along with the anecdotes he includes, he provides interesting medical information such as chapter 8 concerning alcoholism. You walk along with Dr. Franklin as he does his rounds and get in first hand on his interesting cases, meeting his fascinating patients. Some will make you laugh and some will make you cry. Dr. Franklin doesn't use this book to make himself out to be the perfect doctor. You will see him at his worst and you will see him at his best. But most importantly you will walk away from this book with a good feeling and a little bit more information than you had when you began it.
    • 3/5
      Cory Franklin, MD, spent most of his thirty-year career as a doctor in the Intensive Care Unit at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. This book presented vignettes of incidents that happened to him there as well as at other hospitals in other cities while he studied to be a doctor. Through his stories, the reader can gain some insight into how the medical profession works and how and why it has changed. One point that he raised several times was the way medical students, interns, and residents were often bullied by their superiors. While the results could have major effects–not getting admitted to a hospital’s training program or not learning another cause for a medical situation–no explanation was offered for why this happened, how it started, how it permeated the system, or what benefits, if any, it produced. He also discussed the turf wars between internists and surgeons.He also discussed the way hospital personnel, especially doctors, do not see patients as people but as diseases. They miss important information because of that, e.g., stereotyping a patient rather than considering that a condition may be caused by medication. Later on he mentioned how modern medical practices have distanced the doctor and the patients. Underlings do much of the prep work that the doctors used to do. Much work, such as diagnosing, is done with a computer which causes the doctor to be looking at the screen rather than at the patient for much of the examination. COOK COUNTY ICU explained some of the feelings and experiences hospital patients experience. In order for hospitals to run smoothly, patients become infantilized.: They lose control of their environment and freedom and may rebel or react in ways to regain control, e.g., become argumentative or demanding; women may become flirtatious, men may become sexually suggestive. Doctors and nurses who become patients are often the worst offenders because they are more aware of what is happening to them.People or people thought to be poor, confused or had language barriers, had less chance of receiving the same quality of care as did their more respectable counterparts. There is no information about how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has or has not changed that.The book is filled with examples of problems caused by numerous illnesses, some quite difficult to diagnose. It also briefly addressed the HIV-AIDS beginning when patients with the disease began showing up in the emergency room. Extraneous experiences included being the medical consultant for the movie “The Fugitive” and speaking with the doctor in charge of the emergency room in Memphis when Elvis was brought in.Before World War II, most wealthy people were treated at home. Only the less wealthy went to hospitals and at least half could not pay their bills. The slack was picked up by philanthropic groups and the government. That changed after the war when employers began offering medical insurance to their employees. Medicare entered the picture in the 1960s and in the 1980s, private donors were sought to pay for expansion and new construction. The 2000s brought in mergers and consolidations. Independent community hospitals disappeared. The effect the change became evident on the walls of the corridors. Instead of portraits of prominent doctors who were involved with patient care they were replaced by portraits of administrators and board members and plaques with the names of donors and focused on money.One segment of the medical community did not change: Free clinics. They still faced the same medical and medicinal care problems.But they also had more intrastaff congeniality and more appreciation from their patients.Franklin explains why more doctors consider leaving the profession today and some of the problems caused by more government oversight (e.g. HIPAA rules) and electronic record keeping,The vignettes were interesting and brief. The technical jargon was kept to a minimum and was written so the lay reader could understand it. I found the attempts at writing accents, primarily for New Yorkers and Black people, insulting, condescending, and unnecessary. Franklin made it very clear that he did not like the people he met when he went to New York City for interviews. But his statement that “Saul Steinberg’s famous New Yorker cover, “View of the World from Ninth Avenue” is not without some basis assumes that all the readers will be familiar with that cover.I hoped for more content from the book than I found.I received a copy of this book from Goodreads Giveaways.