Join Wordfest for a critically important and timely conversation about the crisis in our health care system with emergency room doctor Brian Goldman (CBC’s White Coat, Black Art). The bestselling expert’s new book is The Casino Shift: Stories from an ER on the Edge—providing transformative insights into the challenges of Canada’s version of The Pitt.
The conversation, hosted by award-winning health journalist Christina Frangou, will include an audience Q&A and book signing, fuelled by Owl’s Nest Books.
Christina Frangou
Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Dr. Brian Goldman is an ER doctor and a bestselling author. His CBC Radio show and podcast, White Coat, Black Art, has been on the air for over a decade. A sought-after speaker, he is also the host of The Dose, a CBC podcast about personal health. He lives in Toronto with his family.
For fans of The Pitt, a look at life on the front line in one of Canada’s busiest ERs
The Casino Shift is an hour-by-hour account of what a Canadian emergency room is like in these turbulent times when ER staff must be prepared to see, diagnose, and treat any condition, often under unrelenting pressure. In addition to the introduction of the “casino shift” (a shorter night shift), there have been incredible leaps in technology and the know-how of ER physicians since Dr. Brian Goldman wrote the bestselling The Night Shift fifteen years ago. But patients’ problems can be exponentially more complex too.
But The Casino Shift is about much more than one shift at one hospital, though. It’s also about what goes on in ERs big and small across Canada. From the incredible challenges of practising “waiting room medicine,” to discovering untreated cancer in a twenty-something patient, to diagnosing an extremely rare case of auto-brewery syndrome, Dr. Goldman shares the stories of frustrated and burned-out colleagues as well as the passion they have for being there in your hour of greatest need. With inspiring stories about diagnoses made, puzzles solved, and lives saved, The Casino Shift is a raw, revealing, and compelling look at life on the front line.
Christina Frangou
Conversation
Libations Bar, with non-alcoholic options
Audience Q&A
Book Signing
75 minutes. No intermission
Christina Frangou is a Calgary journalist who writes about health and social issues. Her stories have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Maclean’s and The Guardian, among others, and cover topics like refugee health, domestic violence, loneliness and widowhood. Frangou has received a National Newspaper Award and multiple National Magazine Awards for feature writing. In 2022, she was awarded the Landsberg Award from the Canadian Women’s Foundation and Canadian Journalism Foundation for her work shedding light on gender injustice in Canada.
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