Doctors Within Borders By David Ansell

Doctors within Borders: the Politics of Health County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago 's Public Hospital, written by David A. Ansell, follows the life of the doctor throughout his residency at Cook County Hospital and his personal encounters with health inequalities. Reading the first fourteen chapters, I got a glimpse into my career path as an aspiring urban doctor (urban as in both: a person of color and a focus on highly populated, under-represented areas). The path of concentrating on the less fortunate is not an easy one, but it is necessary to advance the medical field and trust in doctors. Dr. Ansell presents three major themes: inequities in care, politics as it relates to the healthcare system, and the role of health professionals to initiate this change. County is a call of action; however, similar to their protest it must be …show more content…
“Patient dumping” was mentioned in the book as a method of transferring very ill and often uninsured patients to public hospitals. The problem with these transfers is that the original hospitals were fully capable to accommodate these patients. Ansell showed that unnecessary deaths and complications were occurring due to this phenomenon. “Patients were transferred on ventilators, with gunshot wounds, in active labor” (Ansell 114). These conditions are unacceptable today; however, this was not too long ago. Within such a short time change can happen, but it was structural problems that allowed it to transpire in the first place. County Cook Hospital was also in the midst of a very racially sensitive, politically war torn time (which sadly sounds like most time periods). The patients were, unfortunately, the “other” in the sense that County was their only option. Undoubtedly, more is in play when it comes to “patient care” besides the actual patient. Politics plays a crucial role in the implementation of such