You may be tempted to put down Tom Reynold's Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulance
Readers who've been on the net since the mid-90s will likely remember a recording of a 911 call requesting a «bambulance» [NSFW] for the caller who has been bitten on the neck by a deer he hit with his car. Think of that story multiplied times 270 pages and you've got this book in a nutshell.
This book is a light read that you could finish in a couple of hours. I've spent the last week reading it in little doses and letting it set the tone for my day. Dealing with drunks, idiots or the simply ill mannered isn't quite so tough when you've read a humorous anecdote of the trouble they cause for emergency workers. Of course, anyone who's ever worked in a role that involved any level of customer service will quickly see parallels in stories about concerned passersby calling an ambulance for a collapsed drunk and laugh along with «Control» (the ambulance dispatchers) telling kids making prank calls to look up at the security camera in the call box. Anyone who's had to deal with bureaucracy on a regular basis will feel for the author when he is stuck waiting for a tire change, unable to get to emergencies, because he'd be held responsible if he changed the flat tire on the «Fast Response Unit» and something went wrong.
There's plenty of serious stuff in the book to provoke real thought, too. You'll certainly think twice before trying to beat an ambulance across an intersection or calling in an emergency when getting in the car to drive to the hospital is a more viable option. You'll feel for the emergency workers who take care of us when you read about Reynold's brush with HIV-exposure.
Those who think that the US should emulate Britain's National Health Service should definitely read this book. The common assertion recently is that universal health care frees up emergency rooms for real emergencies. Hardly. It just assures that the indigent who don't have GPs (a family physician) use the ambulance service AND the emergency room as their first stop for medical care.
Bottom line: This is a great book, well worth the read. I got it as an early review copy and it was near the bottom of my list of the books I requested. Sometimes things work out for the best, because I loved this book.
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