“Quality of Care” is a new release from first-time author Elizabeth Letts. From the very first page of the book, I was taken with the realistic depiction of a maternity ward setting, and was not surprised to find that the author is a nurse-midwife by profession. I don’t think she could have portrayed the book so realistically without that level of knowledge; it was that real.
Our character is Clara, a doctor who is on call at the hospital. It’s late at night and she has a few patients laboring, but all is going well. She looks up to see two old friends coming toward her, the husband pushing the wife in a wheelchair. She was Clara’s good friend from their teenage years, he was Clara’s old boyfriend, and they met up and married each other. Now they’re expecting a child, and she doesn’t feel quite right. They stopped at the nearest hospital, which happened to be Clara’s, and ask her for help.
After reading her friend’s history, Clara feels that there’s not much to worry about, but asks them to stay for a while anyway. While Clara is in the other room delivering, something goes horribly wrong with her friend, and Clara is called in. There’s nothing she can do. Her friend dies in labor, and the baby went so long without oxygen, it will either die or be brain damaged.
Clara is grief-stricken about the loss of her friend, but it’s compounded when the hospital decides to hold an investigation into the death. She feels she did everything she could, but another doctor suggests that she was negligent, and she can’t bear that thought. She leaves the hospital, upset beyond words, and then gets a phone call: the hospital is revoking her privileges until they can perform an autopsy.
Interspersed with the storyline taking place now, we get snatches of Clara’s life as a teenager and in college. Her father was also a doctor and he lost his rights to practice as well. Now that she is in the same situation, Clara decides to find the truth about her father’s case and set things right.
I truly enjoyed this novel. The realistic way the hospital scenes were written, the look into Clara’s past as well as her present – it was a beautifully done story, and an amazing first novel. Usually you don’t see this kind of maturity in a first-time author. I do issue the caution, though, that there is a little bit of language and some sexual reference, that while not graphic, may cause some concern if you’re of a more sensitive nature. Again, I leave that up to you to determine for yourself. I found the novel well worth my time and will probably keep it in my collection, after applying the use of the infamous black marker.
(This book was published by Penguin in 2005.)