''Five Patients'' is a

non-fiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or content (media), media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real life, real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to pre ...

book by

Michael Crichton John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author, screenwriter and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavil ...

that recounts his experiences of hospital practices during the late 1960s at

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

and describes the changes he anticipates in healthcare in coming years. It is his first non-fiction book. The book describes each of five patients through their hospital experience and the context of their treatment. Crichton notes in the foreword of the 1994 reprint of this book that medical practices (both the culture, technology, and finances) have changed significantly since the book was written, but that the text was left as is to give a more complete glimpse into the past. The five patients were Ralph Orlando, a construction worker seriously injured in a scaffold collapse; John O'Connor, a middle-aged dispatcher suffering from fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; Peter Luchesi, a young man who severs his hand in an accident; Sylvia Thompson, an airline passenger who suffers chest pains; and Edith Murphy, a mother of three who is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. Crichton recounts a brief history of medicine until 1969 to help contextualize hospital culture and practice and mentions national

healthcare Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

, drug prices, healthcare costs, and healthcare politics. The increasing cost of healthcare is a major theme – then at 15% per year. He quotes Dr. James Howard Means, who is critical of the

American Medical Association The American Medical Association (AMA) is an American professional association and lobbying group of physicians and medical students. This medical association was founded in 1847 and is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Membership was 271,660 ...

: "every attempt has been made by liberally-minded groups to improve medical care and make it more accessible...the AMA has attacked with ever increasing truculence... They forget perhaps that medicine is for the people, not for the doctors. They need some enlightenment on this point."

References

Bibliography

* Crichton, Michael, ''Five Patients'', Ballantine Books, {{Michael Crichton American non-fiction books Books by Michael Crichton 1970 non-fiction books Massachusetts General Hospital Alfred A. Knopf books