Maternity Ward: Behind the Scenes at a Big City Hospital - Hardcover

Stanley, a free-lance journalist from Portland, Oregon, chronicles her three-week sojourn as a fly on the wall in the labor-and-delivery unit of Oregon Health Services Univ. Hospital, a.k.a. ``Pill Hill.'' Stanley chose OHSUH because of its huge volume of patients (250 babies born each month), its state-of-the-art fertility clinic and high-risk-pregnancy facilities, its staff--caring and compassionate to a one, from her description--and its mixed clientele: a few paying patients, a great many indigent women. Daughters impregnated by their fathers, 13-year-olds raped by mothers' boyfriends, drug addicts whose fetuses somersault in their wombs on the ultrasound screen--all are familiar presences on Pill Hill. Stanley gives brief profiles of the dramatis personae: Lily Pratt, a prospective first-time mother who faces an extremely high- risk delivery because of her weight of 468 pounds; Julie O'Brien, about to give birth to a child she knows will be deformed and will probably die; ``Animal'' and Harriet Grackle, an endearing though raffish biker couple--to name just a few. Life and death, blood and tears, and every other bodily humor or product--all are here in faithful detail. In fact, too faithful detail--much of the dramatic impact is dulled by Stanley's attempt to render such a vast cast of characters and describe every Betadine scrub, every Mityvac suctioning, every sugar binge in the staff room. The larger issues challenging obstetrics today--malpractice, maternal drug-abuse, widespread lack of medical insurance, lack of affordable prenatal care for the poor, fertility problems of older two-career couples, parents' sense of entitlement to a ``perfect'' baby--are touched upon but ultimately overshadowed by minutiae. Superficial, then, but, for fans of medical drama, still a roller-coaster ride with plenty of peaks and plunges. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Written by a journalist who followed the action on a busy university hospital maternity ward for three weeks, this book chronicles the true stories of doctors, nurses, students, and patients. Each month about 250 babies are born to low-income women, many of whom have had no prenatal care. Some are drug addicted or abused, while others are middle-class women who have had in vitro fertilization at the clinic. In an episodic but engrossing format, Stanley paints a vivid picture of the ward's various traumas and triumphs, and she details, almost too vividly, the medical procedures. She also brings in the human drama of personnel and patients. Recommended for collections where medical stories are popular.
- Barbara Kormelink, Bay Medical Ctr. Lib., Bay City, Mich.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.