Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Professor of Management at the University of York, England. My interest in ambulances and paramedic work is derived from research I have conducted into England’s National Health Service. This is a ‘free at the point of use’ service which, at its best, provides world-class care to citizens without charge. But the system is terribly underfunded. I am always struck by paramedics’ growing clinical ability, compassion, and devotion to their patients. But equally, I’m alarmed by the extent to which ambulance organizations are desperately overstretched, to the point where the system–and its workers face extreme everyday challenges. 


I wrote

The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession

By Leo McCann,

Book cover of The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession

What is my book about?

This book of mine is academic, but I hope it is one that is readable and human centred. Based on…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Paramedics On and Off the Streets: Emergency Medical Services in the Age of Technological Governance

Leo McCann Why did I love this book?

This excellent read is the first of a recent wave of new books about paramedics and ambulance services. Mike Corman takes us into the working world of ambulance crews in Alberta, Canada. Participant observation provides detail and analysis of how the pre-hospital system operates and how paramedics and technicians interpret and make sense of their roles within it. 

I was particularly impressed with the discussions of conflict within what is a rather patchworked and sometimes poorly coordinated system. Ambulance crews frequently complain of what they see as inappropriate call handling and dispatching, they resent the data-driven micromanaging of their work according to target response times, and they often anticipate conflict with receiving hospitals. Corman rightly argues that ambulance work is the ‘canary in the mine,’ revealing health systems' structural inequalities and limitations.

By Michael K. Corman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Paramedics On and Off the Streets as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Paramedics On and Off the Streets, Michael K. Corman embarks on an institutional ethnography of the complex, mundane, intricate, and exhilarating work of paramedics in Calgary, Alberta.

Corman's comprehensive research includes more than 200 hours of participant observation ride-alongs with paramedics over a period of eleven months, more than one hundred first hand interviews with paramedics, and thirty-six interviews with other emergency medical personnel including administrators, call-takers and dispatchers, nurses, and doctors. At the heart of this ethnography are questions about the role of paramedics in urban environments, the role of information and communication technologies in contemporary health care…


Book cover of Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering

Leo McCann Why did I love this book?

Josh Seim wrote a powerful book about the complex roles of paramedics and ambulances in US cities. What I particularly enjoyed about this text was the way in which it understands the ambulance crew, not so much as the heroic life-savers of TV lore, but rather as downtrodden workers in a broken system of poverty management.

Working as an EMT and documenting his experiences, Seim brilliantly shows how the disjointed and crumbling healthcare system of the United States is failing its citizens and its emergency workers. The EMTs and paramedics of a private ambulance company in Agonia County do their best to serve the public, but they are in very trying conditions. Although the US pre-hospital system is quite different from what I’m familiar with in the UK, I also found dozens of issues that I can relate to. 

By Josh Seim,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bandage, Sort, and Hustle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What is the role of the ambulance in the American city? The prevailing narrative provides a rather simple answer: saving and transporting the critically ill and injured. This is not an incorrect description, but it is incomplete.

Drawing on field observations, medical records, and his own experience as a novice emergency medical technician, sociologist Josh Seim reimagines paramedicine as a frontline institution for governing urban suffering. Bandage, Sort, and Hustle argues that the ambulance is part of a fragmented regime that is focused more on neutralizing hardships (which are disproportionately carried by poor people and people of color) than on…


Book cover of Medicine at the Margins: EMS Workers in Urban America

Leo McCann Why did I love this book?

I loved reading this book, another recent one on ambulances and paramedics. It uses qualitative sociological methods to explore the inner workings of the pre-hospital health system and its workers. Chris Prener, an experienced EMT, took an immersive, ethnographic approach to studying the sociology of ambulance work in Chapman City. 

Prener shows how urban EMS is moving away from its roots as an emergency response system for critically ill and injured patients and becoming more of a community care system, mostly used by vulnerable and neglected populations. Perhaps the most interesting element of the book is its portrayal of the reluctance of ambulance practitioners to embrace these changes. A very insightful book about the messiness and conflict that often reside amid work occupations and healthcare systems.

By Christopher Prener,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Medicine at the Margins as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Presents a unique view of social problems and conflicts over urban space from the cab of an ambulance.
While we imagine ambulances as a site for critical care, the reality is far more complicated. Social problems, like homelessness, substance abuse, and the health consequences of poverty, are encountered every day by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers. Written from the lens of a sociologist who speaks with the fluency of a former Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Medicine at the Margins delves deeply into the world of EMTs and paramedics in American cities, an understudied element of our health care system.
Like…


Book cover of Threshold: Emergency Responders on the US-Mexico Border

Leo McCann Why did I love this book?

This book is engrossing. Because of its fascinating setting, it is unique among the new wave of sociological or anthropological books on paramedic work. Jusionyte has written a remarkable ethnography about paramedics and EMTs working in the US-Mexico borderlands.

While much of the details of ambulance work are familiar, this setting is novel, alien, and disturbing. The book is a powerful critique of the militarization of borders and why this is detrimental, divisive, and degrading. Jusionyte writes with great style and panache; it’s a gripping story crafted in a polemical but persuasive fashion.

I learned a great deal about how the distinctiveness of geographical and political settings can massively influence and shape occupational culture and worker behavior. This is a creative and original work.

By Ieva Jusionyte,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Threshold as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Jusionyte explores the sister towns bisected by the border from many angles in this illuminating and poignant exploration of a place and situation that are little discussed yet have significant implications for larger political discourse."-Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review

Emergency responders on the US-Mexico border operate at the edges of two states. They rush patients to hospitals across country lines, tend to the broken bones of migrants who jump over the wall, and put out fires that know no national boundaries. Paramedics and firefighters on both sides of the border are tasked with saving lives and preventing disasters in the harsh…


Book cover of Running Hot: Structure and Stress in Ambulance Work

Leo McCann Why did I love this book?

This is where it all began–to my knowledge, this book is the very first book-length sociology of ambulance work. Like its successors, Metz’s book is based on ethnographic research methods. Published in 1981, and given the changes that have enveloped paramedicine in the last twenty years, this book is now very dated.

But what I found fascinating was that many important elements and controversies of ambulance work described here remain relevant today. Metz and his colleagues in an EMS provider company regularly muse about the mismatch between the intended design of the EMS system as an emergency system and the reality of the kinds of calls they are sent to.

As such, it anticipates debates taking place forty years later. How can ambulance services be managed and directed best? To what level should we train our ambulance responders? Who calls ambulances and why? What is an ‘appropriate’ use of an ambulance service? What is the ambulance for?

By Donald L. Metz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Running Hot as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

No descriptive material is available for this title.


Explore my book 😀

The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession

By Leo McCann,

Book cover of The Paramedic at Work: A Sociology of a New Profession

What is my book about?

This book of mine is academic, but I hope it is one that is readable and human centred. Based on interviews and observations with NHS paramedics in England, it tells the story of how the 'occupation' of emergency ambulance work has transitioned into the paramedic 'profession'. Through their words and actions, we see how paramedics have developed into a complex and versatile clinical workforce, responding to all manner of callouts from their traditional role of life-threatening emergencies, through to unplanned primary care, social care and simply to people who are distressed, anxious and vulnerable. In writing the book I did my best to convey my admiration and respect for these workers, noting their substantially improved clinical scope and abilities and their compassion and empathy, while also noting the often terrible conditions in which they are employed. Paramedics would rightly complain bitterly about all manner of things they encounter; unsympathetic patients, exhausting shift patterns, wasteful callouts, incomprehensible call prioritizing, bullying managers, and pointless targets and metrics. But they also described their work as 'a privilege' and 'the best job in the world'. I hope that readers interested in healthcare, the NHS, and just work and workplaces in general can appreciate the complexity of the story I tried to tell.

Book cover of Paramedics On and Off the Streets: Emergency Medical Services in the Age of Technological Governance
Book cover of Bandage, Sort, and Hustle: Ambulance Crews on the Front Lines of Urban Suffering
Book cover of Medicine at the Margins: EMS Workers in Urban America

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No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

Book cover of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

Rona Simmons Author Of No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”

Rona's book list on World War II featuring the average Joe

What is my book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.

The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.

No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…

No Average Day: The 24 Hours of October 24, 1944

By Rona Simmons,

What is this book about?

October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…


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