Bellevue: A Documentary of a Large Metropolitan Hospital

by Don Gold

The anatomy of life within a large metropolitan hospital. Real people doctors, nurses, administrators and patients interacting in a memorable way."Fascinating...marvelous."The New York Times

Genres: Nonfiction

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[DeniseMarie Seckinger]

First time I've read a documentary. I liked it. Unbelievable what the staff went through in just one day. And this is back in the 70's. And the follow up on staff and patients throughout the whole book was great. Saddened by the deaths, but, that is life. Not everyone survives.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I've read many accounts of life in a hospital, what set this one apart was that each chapter was divided into smaller sections, with each section describing a day in the life of a professional in a certain specialty, from neurosurgery to administration to OB/Gyn. Though I suspect the author merged many days' observation into each 'day'-long chapter, it worked because he also showed how each specialty interacted with others. On the other hand, breaking the chapters up like this also caused me to lose track of what was going on in each specialty, because I would read about 10 other specialties and their patients before the next chapter would begin and he'd return to a given specialty. Since names were infrequently used, other than patients in the Pediatrics unit who weren't very numerous and all quite different, I couldn't keep patient types like little old ladies and mentally unstable patients straight, as there were some of each on the patient rosters of many specialties.
Within each specialty, Gold follows one specific individual, many of whom are young doctors at some stage of their training process at Bellevue, at the time (and still possibly), the largest hospital system in New York. The book is from the 1970s, so much of what is described is now quite dated, with the way medicine advances at lightening speed, but it's interesting to learn about the past and appreciate those changes. Gold does cover many, many patients in this book and the care they receive, while also enlightening readers about the challenges faced in operating such a large and important facility.
Overall, I enjoyed the book, but after initial excitement about the way it was formatted, I decided it would have been better if each specialty had its own chapter so details and patients would not be forgotten from one 'day' to the next.

[Leslie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book walks through a week of resident and nurse life in Bellevue hospital in 1975. As a piece of medical history, it is interesting. The psychiatric hospital has long dominated impressions of Bellevue, and a glimpse of mental health practice pre-Reagan is instructive. It appeared to be much more integrated than my current experience, and the understanding of how much psychiatric comorbidity dominates management of other disease seemed more overt. The writing style is of a different era, and is somewhat choppy and at times hard to follow because Mr. Gold tried to capture so much of the activity of the hospital that it jumps from patient to patient. (This was also clearly pre-HIPAA--patient names and descriptors are everywhere.) Such a book will not be written again because of concerns about patient confidentiality. Understanding how certain parts of medical practice became established, and how they have changed, particularly vis-a-vis risk/benefit analysis, medical paternalism, and hospital lengths of stay and medicalization, was interesting as well.

[Ronald Wise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A paperback that's been in my personal collection a long time and which I first read in the late 1970s. A non-fiction description of the week of several medical professionals at New York City's Bellevue Medical Center. Not all that gripping, but provides some insight into the workings of the hospital setting, albeit nearly thirty years ago. I had to do a little surgery myself, as the book broke in half when I got halfway through it.

[Colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

while it was written in 1972 and , therefore, a bit outdated, it was still an interesting read. Gave you a feel of what life at a large city hospital would be like