07/09/2018
In his lively and touching debut, Sims recounts his year-and-a-half stay as a doctor in Alaska. As he neared the end of his internship at UCLA in 1971, Sims accepted a pediatric physician job with the U.S. Public Health Service and was assigned work in the remote arctic town of Nome. There, with his pregnant wife and young daughter, Sims served as the town’s lone doctor and encountered bureaucratic obstructions from the administrator at the hospital where he worked; local skepticism after his predecessor impregnated an Eskimo girl, then planned to give her an abortion; and a lack of modern medical instruments and drugs. Buoyed by his steadfast wife, Pat, and an instinctive gift for seat-of-his-pants-doctoring, Sims delivered babies, took out appendixes, and treated broken limbs; he eventually became a part of the community and a lifeline for far-flung Eskimo villages. His writing moves at a rapid-pace, in step with the life-and-death tales he recounts, slowing down only to focus on such moving occasions as the birth of a three-pound baby and the painful death of a hospital colleague. Sims has delivered a captivating account of practicing medicine in the furthest reaches of the U.S. (Sept.)
On Call in the Arctic: A Doctor's Pursuit of Life, Love, and Miracles in the Alaskan Frontier
Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world's most isolated and unforgiving environments-Nome, Alaska.
That's what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become a pediatric surgeon were drastically changed when, on the eve of being drafted into the Army to serve as a M.A.S.H. surgeon in Vietnam, he was offered a commission in the U.S. Public Health for assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was scheduled to act as Chief of Pediatrics at the Alaska Native Medical Center.
But life changed, along with his military orders, when he learned he was being transferred from Anchorage to work as the only physician in Nome. There, he had the awesome responsibility of rendering medical care under archaic conditions to the population of this frontier town plus thirteen Eskimo villages in the surrounding Norton Sound area. And he did it alone with little help and support. All the while, he was pegged as both an “outsider” and an employee of the much-derided federal government.
In order to do his job, Dr. Sims had to overcome racism, cultural prejudices, and hostility from those who would have liked to see him sent packing. On Call in the Arctic reveals the thrills and the terrors of frontier medicine, showing how Dr. Sims had to rely upon his instincts, improvise, and persevere against all odds in order to help his patients on the icy shores of the Bering Sea.
1128016219
On Call in the Arctic: A Doctor's Pursuit of Life, Love, and Miracles in the Alaskan Frontier
Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world's most isolated and unforgiving environments-Nome, Alaska.
That's what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become a pediatric surgeon were drastically changed when, on the eve of being drafted into the Army to serve as a M.A.S.H. surgeon in Vietnam, he was offered a commission in the U.S. Public Health for assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was scheduled to act as Chief of Pediatrics at the Alaska Native Medical Center.
But life changed, along with his military orders, when he learned he was being transferred from Anchorage to work as the only physician in Nome. There, he had the awesome responsibility of rendering medical care under archaic conditions to the population of this frontier town plus thirteen Eskimo villages in the surrounding Norton Sound area. And he did it alone with little help and support. All the while, he was pegged as both an “outsider” and an employee of the much-derided federal government.
In order to do his job, Dr. Sims had to overcome racism, cultural prejudices, and hostility from those who would have liked to see him sent packing. On Call in the Arctic reveals the thrills and the terrors of frontier medicine, showing how Dr. Sims had to rely upon his instincts, improvise, and persevere against all odds in order to help his patients on the icy shores of the Bering Sea.
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On Call in the Arctic: A Doctor's Pursuit of Life, Love, and Miracles in the Alaskan Frontier
On Call in the Arctic: A Doctor's Pursuit of Life, Love, and Miracles in the Alaskan Frontier
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173001474 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dreamscape Media |
| Publication date: | 01/28/2020 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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