What was it like to work in Cook County Hospital? How did it feel to be treated there? David Ansell's County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital (2011) explores these questions in the form of a research-memoire. Built in 1914, the hospital was judged inadequately designed for medical care-giving in the 1920s. A replacement building, the John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, did not open until 2002. Meanwhile, for decades patients suffered from the indignity of the poor conditions within the hospital. Dr. Ansell will be speaking of his experiences working at Cook County Hospital for seventeen years and reading from the book at 57th Street Books, Wednesday, June 22 at 6pm.
Links
Interview with Dr. David Ansell, "'Life Death and Politics' Treating Chicago's Uninsured," NPR Radio (June 15, 2011).
Judith Graham, "Cook Country crucible shows perils of one health care system for the poor, one for the rich," Chicago Tribune (June 3, 2011).
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