By Dave Davies, National Public Radio, March 23, 2022
Though he fully expected to be infected with COVID, Dr. Thomas Fisher says he was committed to providing medical care to the Black community on Chicago's South Side. His new book is The Emergency.
DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in today for Terry Gross. In January of 2020, when the COVID pandemic was just appearing in news stories, Thomas Fisher says he knew the onslaught was inevitable, and he expected to be infected before it was over. Thomas is an emergency room doctor at the University of Chicago Medical Center, and his new memoir chronicles his experiences in the first year of the COVID crisis, struggling to stay safe while doing his best for patients. Thomas has been in emergency medicine for two decades, and he writes that he's made it his life's mission to care for his people, the Black population of Chicago's South Side. His book describes his frustration with a health care system that leaves him too little time and too few resources to meet all his patients' needs. And he writes about ways his patients' health is undermined by the world they live in, one of relentless gun violence and enduring impacts from racist practices such as redlining, employment discrimination, inequities in city services and police brutality.
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