Life Support

Diary of an ICU Doctor on the Frontline of the Covid Crisis

Dr Jim Down

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Hardback

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English

Viking
01 June 2021

Autobiography: science, technology & engineering; Intensive care medicine

A powerful, moving account of an intensive care doctor's life on the frontline of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a doctor running the intensive care unit at one of London's top hospitals, Jim Down has spent his life working as healthcare's last resort, where the unexpected is always around the corner, and life and death decisions are an everyday occurrence.

But nothing had prepared Jim and his team for the events of spring 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic descended. In Life Support, he tells the extraordinary month-by-month story of how as the nation came to a standstill, he and his colleagues donned PPE, received an unprecedented influx of patients, transformed their hospital and took on the biggest challenge in the history of the NHS.

The pandemic raised difficult questions for Jim- how do you fight a new disease? How do you go home at night to your wife and young children when you've spent all day around highly infectious patients? How do you tell a mother that her healthy young son has died, only days after falling ill?

With warmth, honesty and humour, this book is a gripping, moving testament to the everyday heroism of the NHS staff in a global crisis, and an unforgettable insight into what was really happening in the wards as we clapped on our doorsteps.

By: Dr Jim Down
Imprint: Viking
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 144mm, Spine: 24mm
Weight: 346g
ISBN: 9780241506318
ISBN 10: 024150631X
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 01 June 2021
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Dr Jim Down is a consultant in critical care and anaesthesia based in London. He chairs the ICU consultants' group, the department of anaesthesia weekly scientific meetings and the UCLH Trust guideline committee. During the Covid-19 pandemic he worked on UCLH's busy ICU ward, and was interviewed by the BBC for a groundbreaking report depicting medics on the frontline. His account of that period, Life Support, was published in 2021 and his second book, Life in the Balance, was published in 2023.

Reviews for Life Support: Diary of an ICU Doctor on the Frontline of the Covid Crisis

A deeply moving and beautifully written account of what life was truly like for our frontline ICU teams during COVID-19 -- Dr Kevin Fong 'Jim Down's Life Support is essential reading for everyone who has been affected by Covid-19, which is to say everyone. Beautifully written, it combines warmth, humour and science to give a portrait of one of the most important but least understood parts of any hospital by one of the UKs pre-eminent ICU physicians' -- Dr Chris van Tulleken 'One of the doctors with the most hands-on experience of Covid in the country' -- Edward Docx * New Statesman *