Lessons in Politics and Ethics from the Public Hospital

Stephen William Foster (Ph.D. Anthropology, Princeton; MS Nursing, Yale) taught Anthropology at Smith College and the University of California, Berkeley, and was a clinical instructor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. He worked as nursing supervisor at San Francisco General Hospital for over two decades and is the author of The Past Is Another Country: Representation, Historical Consciousness and Resistance in the Blue Ridge (1988) and Cosmopolitan Desire: Transcultural Dialogues and Antiterrorism in Morocco, (2006), as well as essays, reviews and poetry.

"Lessons in Politics and Ethics from the Public Hospital is a masterful and beautifully written ethnographic exploration of the inner workings of one the last and greatest public teaching hospitals in the country—San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. As an anthropologist, nurse and hospital supervisor, Foster has been a quiet observer at the center of the action for almost three decades. Through the processes of care he identifies, Foster uncovers the ways in which the rendering of individual level care to patients is navigated, negotiated, facilitated and at times compromised within its institutional and public contexts. This book provides a powerful and invaluable analysis of the complex dynamics that surround the safety net—the continuities and discontinuities of how care is organized and delivered within a public teaching hospital."~ Leslie Dubbin, Associate Professor, School of Nursing, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, USA.

• Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Chapter One: History; Chapter Two: Rounds; Chapter Three: Normalization; Chapter Four: Care; Chapter Five: Trauma; Chapter Six: Cost; Chapter Seven: Mind; Chapter Eight: Ethics; References Cited; Index.