E. Wesley Ely, MD, MPH, is a pulmonary and critical care physician who earned his MD at Tulane University School of Medicine, in conjunction with a master’s in public health. He serves as the Grant W. Liddle Endowed Chair in medicine and is a physician-scientist and tenured professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is also the associate director of ageing research for the Tennessee Valley Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center (GRECC). Dr Ely has published studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and other publications. He lives in Nashville and is the founder and codirector of the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, and Survivorship (CIBS) Center, an organisation devoted to research and recovery for people affected by critical illness. Dr Ely is donating all his net proceeds from this book to a fund at the CIBS Center established to help ICU survivors and their families. Visit www.icudelirium.org.

‘Critical care physician Ely draws on his own experience for this book about the role of humanity and compassion in the ICU … It includes sensitive analysis of the racialised 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 … Heightened media attention to intensive care medicine during the pandemic should make this of interest to both lay and professional readers. Ely writes with passion, clarity, and authority.’

E. Wesley Ely, MD, MPH, is a pulmonary and critical care physician who earned his MD at Tulane University School of Medicine, in conjunction with a master’s in public health. He serves as the Grant W. Liddle Endowed Chair in medicine and is a physician-scientist and tenured professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is also the associate director of ageing research for the Tennessee Valley Veterans Affairs Geriatric Research Education Clinical Center (GRECC). Dr Ely has published studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and The Lancet, and his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and other publications. He lives in Nashville and is the founder and codirector of the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction, and Survivorship (CIBS) Center, an organisation devoted to research and recovery for people affected by critical illness. Dr Ely is donating all his net proceeds from this book to a fund at the CIBS Center established to help ICU survivors and their families. Visit www.icudelirium.org.

‘Critical care physician Ely draws on his own experience for this book about the role of humanity and compassion in the ICU … It includes sensitive analysis of the racialised 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 … Heightened media attention to intensive care medicine during the pandemic should make this of interest to both lay and professional readers. Ely writes with passion, clarity, and authority.’