The work of inner-city emergency psychiatric units might best be described as "medicine under siege." Emptying Beds is the result of the author's two-year immersion in one such unit and its work. It is an account of the strategies developed by a staff of psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, and other mental health workers to deal with the dilemmas they face every day.
This author did a reaaaally nice job tying her observations in an emergency psych ward with Foucault's life work theorizing institutions and knowledge-power relations. The irony of health care really hits home. (But I think that things improved since this book was written and they are improving still... probably because of books and studies/observations like this.)