A License to Heal

<p> An emergency room physician recalls his eventful career in this insightful occasionally harrowing memoir. Despite the subtitle debut author Bentley's reminiscences are hardly random. They have been selected to succinctly or dramatically convey the progression of a decades-long career. Leaving out personal details unless relevant to his anecdotes Bentley emerges as a compassionate doctor who sympathizes with his patients including those who have allowed their bodies to fall apart. He is also empathetic; for example he rails against oncologists o���ering the promise of 'more life' without mentioning the horrible side e���ects that a patient might endure from a last-resort cancer treatment. Bentley however acknowledges that many ER admissions and treatments re���ect the pressure from health care corporations to keep their hospitals as busy as possible-whether treatment or even in some cases admissions are justi���ed. Sometimes questionable admissions like that of a patient who didn't have any discernible blood pressure because he was dead illustrate incompetence rather than corporate greed. But Bentley also encountered many patients seeking treatment for ���ctitious problems solely to obtain a particular painkiller or to avoid a court date or some other sel���sh motive which only added to the burdens of a largely broken health care system. Th e horrors documented here include a lab tech discarding blood samples and returning to the magazine he was reading; the wallet biopsies in which insurance policies dictate treatment; and malpractice suits ��� led almost automatically when ER patients die.</p><p> </p>