Review: "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" by Tony Bleetman

 

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? by Tony Bleetman
Published 2019 via Ebury
★★★

A call comes in, and the doctors take to the sky: in relatively recent years, parts of the UK have switched from a strictly paramedicine approach to emergency sites to bringing a doctor along for the ride—because although paramedics can do a huge amount on scene, in some situations a doctor will have training and authorizations that make a difference. Bleetman describes a life as one of those doctors, working a day job at a hospital and volunteering regular shifts at the air base.

I don't have a television, but one thing on YouTube that I quite enjoy is shows about paramedics and other real-life medical rescues—not so much ER or Grey's Anatomy, but the ones where it's real people and real emergencies. There's not really a need to piggy-back on dozens of think pieces about what it says about humanity that we enjoy true crime and medical stories and whatever, but imagine my surprise when I realised that Bleetman's crew was featured in one of these series, and the mental image I'd been running throughout the book was probably actually more accurate than not.

As a book it's mostly...fine. Bleetman may be an excellent doctor, and certainly I would trust these air crews in an emergency, but he does tend to make judgements (and thus jokes) based on things like class and weight and sex (one woman is referred to as The Bitch throughout the book—it's supposed to be affectionate, but even if that's how she experiences it in real life, it doesn't translate in print), which is...not my favorite thing. I'd love to read more along these lines, but I'm going to hope for a female author with a better sense of humor next time.