Trauma: Critical Moments in Emergency

40 stories; one emergency department. Trauma: Critical Moments in Emergency takes the reader into the world of emergency medicine through 40 lyrical vignettes of patient encounters. Each story explores the enduring themes of emergency care - violence, addiction, grief and overcrowding - while illuminating the humanity that exists within the clinical setting: the acts of care between patients and clinicians, the moments of tenderness and pathos which transcend the medicine, and the reasons we keep coming back to emergency. Although anonymised to protect confidentiality, these are the stories that have lingered through 20 years of clinical practice. They are the stories I tell after a shift, at dinner or breakfast, when my family asks, "how was your shift?"