Here are 43 books that Paramedics On and Off the Streets fans have personally recommended if you like
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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.
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.
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…
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 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.
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.
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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.
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…
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.
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.
"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…
Coming from the perspective of a neurosurgeon, I have witnessed many successes and failures over more than four decades. I recognized decades ago that communication with patients at a level that involves emotions is a necessary part of being a complete physician. This involves being empathetic and, henceforth, digging deep to find the strength to be transparent, vulnerable, compassionate, understanding, and, when needed, forceful (some would call this paternalism). Although the five books I have chosen to highlight vary widely in content, they have one common theme – finding within us the will and wherewithal to succeed.
For me, this book was a complete "eye-opener." I was impressed by the risks taken, the fortitude and strength to move forward against massive odds, and the unlikely players (African American individuals with no prior training creating the first paramedic team in the world).
It all happened in Pittsburgh in the early ’70s. I was moved by the desire to succeed, which was in clear display. I was also very impressed by the lack of need for self-recognition. They did what they did because they knew it was the right thing to do. I truly admire that human characteristic.
Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local funeral home. But that all changed with Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America's first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their story and their legacy erased-until now.
In American Sirens, acclaimed journalist and paramedic Kevin Hazzard tells the dramatic story of how a group of young, undereducated Black men forged a new frontier of healthcare. He follows a rich…
I remember devouring Tom Clancy’s Hunt for Red October. I loved the premise, the technology, the maritime aspect, and most of all, how Jack Ryan, a normal guy, managed to buck conventional wisdom and groupthink. Then, as the genre developed, it became more and more about the so-called “super spy.” While I enjoy the characters—the list is long: Jack Ryan Junior, Mitch Rapp, Scot Harvath, Hayley Chill… I can’t relate. I mean, they go on five-mile runs before breakfast, never break a sweat, and remain perfectly composed. That’s not me. That might not be you, either. Ben Porter is my answer to the unachievable perfection in the current crop of heroes.
I read this book during the depths of the Covid pandemic. Fitting, indeed, because it postulates a different kind of pandemic, no less terrifying and disruptive. What grabbed me was not the topic per se, though (as prescient as it was, when it was written). Instead, I found myself really cheering for Alexis, a hero who didn’t want the job of being a hero—and yet takes on the challenge while proving that heroes don’t need to be perfect.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a twisting story of love and deceit: an American man vanishes on a rural road in Vietnam, and his girlfriend follows a path that leads her home to the very hospital where they met.
Alexis and Austin don’t have a typical “meet cute”—their first encounter involves Alexis, an emergency room doctor, suturing a bullet wound in Austin’s arm. Six months later, they’re on a romantic getaway in Vietnam: a bike tour on which Austin can show Alexis his passion for cycling, and can pay his…
As a cancer doctor, I have spent two decades dedicated to understanding the causes and therapy of cancer, how my patients experience their diagnosis and treatment, and how meaningful improvements in their experience should be reflected in the criteria we use to approve cancer drugs approval in the U.S., to improve their lives. In over 100 essays published in outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post and in two books, I sing the stories of my patients as I learn from their undaunted spirits and their utter humanity, as I try to figure out how to be a better doctor, and a better person.
If you ever need to go to the emergency room, you would want Jay Baruch to be your doctor.
In Tornado of Life, Jay explores medicine as an exercise in storytelling, and across a series of essays, tries to find truth in the stories his patients tell him.
With each patient we encounter, we struggle along with Jay to solve the moral quandaries of medical practice in the 21st century, and share in the heartache faced by the families surviving medical catastrophes.
Stories from the ER: a doctor shows how empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care.
To be an emergency room doctor is to be a professional listener to stories. Each patient presents a story; finding the heart of that story is the doctor’s most critical task. More technology, more tests, and more data won’t work if doctors get the story wrong. Empathy, creativity, and imagination are the cornerstones of clinical care. In Tornado of Life, ER physician Jay Baruch offers a series of short, powerful, and affecting essays that capture the stories of ER patients in all…
Juggling roles as a professor, nurse practitioner, author, mother, and grandmother would seem to limit my reading time but instead, I always have a book in my car, on my phone, or in my hands. I read broadly and enjoy all genres, from fiction to nonfiction, poetry to medical comics, as well as the creative essay columns nursing journals are beginning to embrace. In particular, I gravitate toward resources that help nurses create a positive relational workplace where their best efforts can be even more effective. Whether it’s ending the RN-RA (relational aggression) Rut, using poetry to express feelings about caregiving, or writing creatively about the many aspects of nursing, I am ready to read! And of course, the best part of reading is having a discussion with colleagues or friends about what exactly that book was about…
Although younger readers may enjoy Echo’s newer non-fiction titled Emergency Nurses 24/7 captures the challenges and triumphs of nurses as they enter practice or specialty areas for the first time. After ten years in the intensive care team, she has intriguing stories to share—which may be why her memoir spent 8 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list.
This is a nurse's story unlike any other, because Echo Heron is a very special nurse. Dedicated to healing and helping in the harshest environments, she spent ten years in emergency rooms and intensive care units. Her story is unique, penetrating, and unforgettable. Her story is real. "Compelling reading." NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
I’ve always been drawn to characters who are no longer on the edge but have stepped off and are halfway down the plummet—and while they’re falling through their trauma, they see the world’s darkness from an angle that translates into a beautiful kind of philosophy. People who have lived through hell have a perspective unlike those who have never struggled. The hell I lived through has given way to my own kind of philosophy and I let the darkness from my life come through my writing in streaks of light.
Whoa, this book is a fun, chaotic dip into burnout. I had to just let go when I was reading, let the words crash over me like a wave, and get bashed around by the crazy stream-of-consciousness. The narrator's memories, fantasies, thoughts, delusions, worries, and everything else are all mixed up with crazy secondary characters and set in a realistically gritty and raw New York City. As a former resident of NYC, who has heard horror stories from lifelong residents, I could hear the desperate truth in every line. The narrator wants to quit—quit the trauma, the stress eating away at his nerves, but he keeps drinking, shooting up, and speeding to the next overdose, shooting, and heart attack. The narrator’s struggle between giving up on everything and trying one more time to find redemption in a broken city full of violence, sickness, and death took me one step closer…
The author of Taxi Driver returns to the darkest streets of New York City for another story of lost souls. It is the early 1990s: Frank Pierce is an EMS paramedic, driving an ambulance through the city's darkest streets on the 'graveyard shift'. Surrounded by the injured and the dying, Frank is dwelling in an urban night-world, and crumbling under the accumulated weight of too many years spent saving - and losing - lives. Bringing Out the Dead is the account of fifty-six hours in Frank's life - two days and three nights on the job - as, hungering for…
I’m a musician – singer/composer/educator/researcher – based in Northern England, and I’ve become fascinated through my community music work to see how music can change people’s experience – of themselves, of other people, of their community and their relationship to the world around them. With all of the complex challenges we currently face as a species, I’m interested in the potential of music-making as a resource to help us navigate toward a more hopeful future. Making music is an important part of our unique collective history as humans – and we need to draw on it now to help us evolve into a species that can live more harmoniously and sustainably on our fragile planet.
Tia DeNora is a brilliant sociologist who writes a lot about music, and this book makes a great argument for music as a resource, or what she calls a ‘technology of self’.
We use music to shape our identity, and drawing on Erving Goffman’s ideas about ‘asylums’, she suggests that music is one such space we create in our lives where we can find ourselves again. Being musical becomes an integral part of being human.
Music has always been somewhere I’ve found solace and freedom, and I know that it’s the same for lots of the people I work with, and this book really explains why that’s so.
Taking a cue from Erving Goffman's classic work, Asylums, Tia DeNora develops a novel interdisciplinary framework for music, health and wellbeing. Considering health and illness both in medical contexts and in the often-overlooked realm of everyday life, DeNora argues that these identities are by no means mutually exclusive. Moreover, she suggests that the promotion of health and more specifically, mental health, involves a great deal more than a concern with medication, genetic predispositions, clinical and neuro-scientific procedures. Adopting a holistic, interactionist focus, Music Asylums reconnects states of wellness and wellbeing to encounters with others and - critically - to opportunities…
