O.R.: The True Story of 24 Hours in a Hospital Operating Room

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers readers a gripping, blow-by-blow account of twenty-four hours in the operating suite of North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York. 20,000 first printing. National ad/promo.

Newsday science and medical reporter Colen ( The Essential Gide to a Living Will ) here records in palpable fashion what goes on during a typical 24-hour period in an operating room which he monitored for six weeks at a teaching hospital on New York's Long Island. He makes readers marvel at the surgeons' split-second decisions, almost artistic skill, mastery of technology and teamwork in his eyewitness of open heart surgery and facial reconstruction of babies, among other procedures. As a head nurse affirms, not only is O.R. "the unknown place" to all but those who work there, it also calls for nurses to act as the patients' "advocates" during their operations. BOMC selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

As observed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Colen ( Karen Ann Quinlan , LJ 11/1/76; Born at Risk , LJ 3/1/81), this book tells "what really happens to patients when they have an operation... what surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and the various members of the operating room support staff do when they go to work each day." It focuses on the main operating room of the North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, where Colen was freely granted access to the hospital's 16 operating rooms and allowed to observe any procedure, ask any question, and record any event or conversation. The result is "an album of snapshots that together form a mosaic of life in the operating room" over a 24-hour period. This absorbing, fast-paced, and well-written BOMC selection is recommended for all popular medical collections.
- James Swanton, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.