Press Release | Fact Sheet | Cover Art

Press Release

For Release: March 1st, 2007 Conversation on NPR (Interview starts at 0:39:10 minute)

For Release: February 28th, 2007 Aircheck Radio Interview KION

For Release: October 15, 2006 Contact: Jeanne House, Publicist, (707)888-3314, jeanne@authorspublishing.com

What Really Goes On Behind That Operating Room Door? An Insider Surgeon Tells All

SEATTLE: Hiding among the sterile scrubs and gleaming instruments of an operating room is a whole lot of high drama: split-second life-and-death decisions…deep questions of ethics…roaring personality conflicts…the glory of saving a life-and the horror when a simple procedure goes terribly wrong. Renowned surgeon Pierce Scranton, Jr., whose credits (among many others) include serving as President of both the American Orthopaedic Foot & Ankle Society and the NFL Physicians Society (made up of doctors who treat NFL professional football players), stints as Chief of Orthopedics for a Seattle hospital and teaching orthopedics at two universities, and being Associate Editor for the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, kept a detailed diary of his internship year at a busy California teaching hospital. Dr. Scranton has shaped that diary into a vivid fictionalized memoir of a year in the trenches: Death on the Learning Curve: The Making of a Surgeon, to be published in November 2006 by Elite Books (Hardcover, $24.95, www.piercescranton.com, ISBN 1-60070-014-4). Unknown to outside observers, America's operating rooms in teaching hospitals are full of controversy: How can patients, especially indigent ones, get proper medical care when a hospital's emphasis is split between learning and healing? What happens when academics run into conflict with hands-on working doctors? What happens to patients when specialists from different disciplines fight to establish their dominance? When does it make sense to use a new treatment to prolong life, and when will that cause more problems? How do doctors balance the need to test new treatments with the need to provide adequate care? What happens to medical ethics when lawyers and bean-counters get involved? When do relationships between medical staff "go too far?" Dr. Scranton will be happy to answer these and any other questions. Journalists: to arrange an interview and/or a review copy, please contact Jeanne House, Publicist, (707)888-3314, jeanne@authorspublishing.com.