Life in the Balance

Regular price €17.50
A01=Dr Jim Down
A01=Jim Down
adam kay
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alexander litvinenko
Author_Dr Jim Down
Author_Jim Down
autobiography
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bedside guardian 2022
biographies and autobiographies
biography
Category1=Non-Fiction
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clinical nursing procedures
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do no harm
doctors captive
duty of care
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extreme medical services
first aid fundamentals
health
icu
intensive care
intensive care medicine
Language_English
life and death
medical
medical books
medicine
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memoir
mental health
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nurses stories
PA=Available
paramedic
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Price_€10 to €20
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sociology
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war doctor

Product details

  • ISBN 9780241506394
  • Weight: 181g
  • Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
  • Publication Date: 29 Feb 2024
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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'A remarkably honest memoir of a life spent pulling people back from death' - Adam Kay

In these stories, Dr Jim Down brings us to the very heart of the intensive care unit - the section of the hospital where the sickest patients are brought to be cared for until their condition improves. With honesty, humility and a streak of dark humour, Dr Down describes the quietly heroic work of doctors and nurses on the ICU, a place which sits at the cutting edge of medical technology and where a split-second decision can make the difference between life and death.

From headline-grabbing cases like that of Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned by Russian agents and admitted to Down's ward, to the appalling aftermath of a train crash, Life in the Balance offers an inside glimpse of intensive care medicine, its immense challenges, deleterious effects on doctors' mental health and enormous rewards. Its profundity will make you reconsider the fragility of life and reframe your understanding of what it means to care.

Dr Jim Down is a consultant in critical care and anaesthesia based in London. He chairs the ICU consultants' group, the department of anaesthesia weekly scientific meetings and the UCLH Trust guideline committee. During the Covid-19 pandemic he worked on UCLH's busy ICU ward, and was interviewed by the BBC for a groundbreaking report depicting medics on the frontline. His account of that period, Life Support, was published in 2021 and his second book, Life in the Balance, was published in 2023.