The Cut

Saving lives is meant to be above politics.

In a troubled health system, where patient outcomes and personal gain are intertwined, Harvey Pearce discovers a disturbing and dangerous truth.

In The Cut, Dr Harvey Pearce is an emergency specialist who has spent a career looking after the sickest patients and improving emergency care. Harvey is a clinician and academic, and a respected and successful leader. He works in the Emergency Department of a major hospital and lives a healthy though tastefully indulgent aesthetic life as a single 50-something man. When he uncovers politically orchestrated activities that kill patients, harm staff, hide deficiencies and hinder progress, he becomes determined to find a solution.

Across the city, episodes of patient injury and preventable deaths continue despite Harvey's struggles with bureaucracy. He drives to investigate these events and their sinister connections, whilst the establishment resists his efforts and its leaders continue to tolerate catastrophes. Pearce finds a grounding for his efforts through his podcasts. As he struggles to put things right, they fuel his aspirations by proposing a pragmatic approach, offering a view that life could be better navigated with a closer focus on what really matters. They support the philosophical background of the plot and have a relevance beyond clinical medicine or healthcare to everyday life.

But Harvey is quickly confronted with desperate and ruthless players who turn his efforts at reform into a perilous game with critical stakes. The investigation of this game leads to a full understanding of the complexity of the scenario and a revelation of the motives and mechanisms of the system failures.

This is an absorbing novel about damage and death, safety and survival, evil and ethics, and the ever-present hope for a better way.

The Cut is:

• A 'must read' for emergency and acute health professionals.
• Perhaps the new 'House of God' for this millennium.
• Absorbing and revealing - a gripping medico political drama with a touch of philosophy.
• A lively tale of mischief, mayhem and modern life. relevant to us all.
• A source of insights and solutions.
• Disturbingly accurate and carefully nuanced, this insider's story of what goes on (and wrong) in health systems is compelling reading.