Every Deep-Drawn Breath: A Critical Care Doctor on Healing, Recovery, and Transforming Medicine in the ICU

Critical care physician Ely (Vanderbilt Univ. Medical Ctr.) draws on his own experience for this book about the role of humanity and compassion in the ICU. Looking back on his early career, Ely now finds that he focused on the methodology of keeping ICU patients alive, at the expense of trying to understand patients’ experiences during and beyond their ICU stay; his path forward from that insight forms the backbone of the book. It includes sensitive analysis of the racialized history of critical care medicine and health care disparities that stem from gender, class, and disability. Ely discusses post–intensive care syndrome, which he believes is too-little discussed by patients and health-care professionals. The syndrome’s sometimes permanent changes to a patient’s health arise from the ICU stay itself rather than the original reason for admission; overuse of deep sedation and medical paralysis on ventilator patients is now recognized as a primary contributor to delirium on the unit and long-term mental and physical disabilities. Ely’s book also supplies a number of resources for patients and their families, plus a list of further reading.