Life on the Ground Floor Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine

by Maskalyk, James

• ISBN13: 9780385665988
• ISBN10: 0385665989
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2018-08-28
• Publisher: Anchor Canada

Summary

Masterfully written and artfully structured, Life on the Ground Floor is a celebrated humanitarian doctor's unique perspective on sickness, health and what it is to be alive.


     Deeply personal in its scope, doctor and activist James Maskalyk--author of the highly acclaimed Six Months in Sudan--draws upon his experience treating patients in the world's emergency rooms. From Toronto to Addis Ababa, Cambodia to Bolivia, he discovers that although the cultures, resources and medical challenges of each hospital may differ, they are linked indelibly by the ground floor: the location of their emergency rooms. Here, on the ground floor, is where Dr. Maskalyk witnesses the story of "human aliveness"--our mourning and laughter, tragedies and hopes, the frailty of being and the resilience of the human spirit. And it's here too that he is swept into the story, confronting his fears and doubts and questioning what it is to be a doctor.

Author Biography

DR. JAMES MASKALYK is a physician and bestselling author. He practices emergency medicine and trauma at St. Michael's, Toronto's inner-city hospital, and is an award-winning teacher at the University of Toronto. His first book, Six Months in Sudan, was an international bestseller. He directs a program that works with Ethiopian partners at Addis Ababa University to train East Africa's first emergency physicians and is a member of Medecins Sans Frontieres, an organization for which he has worked as both a journalist and a physician. In 2007, he was MSF's first official blogger. He practices and teaches mindfulness at the Consciousness Explorers Club in Toronto, and is passionate about its potential to encourage personal and social change.