The Night Shift

Dr. Brian Goldman is an emergency room physician who has worked at Mount Sinai Hospital in downtown Toronto for more than twenty years. He is also a prominent medical journalist and the host of CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art. Never one to shy away from controversy, Goldman specializes in kicking open the doors to the medical establishment, revealing what really goes on behind the scenes – and in the minds of doctors and nurses.

In The Night Shift (September 18, 2010), Goldman shares his experiences of working through the witching hours at Mount Sinai, as well as at the other hospitals where he has spent his long career. We meet the kinds of patients who walk into an E.R. after midnight: late-night revelers injured on their way home after last calls; teens assaulted in the streets by other teens; and one woman who was punched by another out of jealousy over a man. But Goldman also reveals the emotional, heart-breaking side of routine E. R. visits: victims of sexual assault; adult children forced to make life-and-death decisions about critically ill parents; police officers searching out injured suspects; and mentally ill and homeless patients looking for understanding and a quick fix in the twenty-four-hour waiting room. While the rest of the world sleeps, nurses, doctors, and other health-care practitioners administer to the city’s sick and unfortunate, fuelled by coffee and the collective desire to help those often unable to help themselves as they await diagnosis in the charged confines of the hospital’s E.R.

Written with Goldman’s trademark honesty and with surprising humour, The Night Shift is also a frank look at many of the issues facing the medical profession today and a highly compelling view into an often shrouded world.

For more than twenty years, Dr. Brian Goldman has been a highly regarded emergency room physician at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He has parlayed his medical expertise into an award-winning career in medical journalism. Dr. Goldman is CBC Radio One’s “house doctor” and the host of the radio program White Coat, Black Art. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two children.

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