Participial Substantives of the Ata Type in the Romance Languages: With Special Reference to French (1912)

Sean Rooney, a medical student, survives the atroublesa in Belfast, graduates with commendation, but decides to immigrate to the United States. Following a residency at Duke, he accepts a staff appointment at a Veteran’s Administration Hospital. Warming to the practice style of the VA, he eventually becomes chief-of-staff. He quickly realizes that his ideas of patient care differ from those of a politically motivated, bureaucratic hospital administrator. The inevitable tensions become focused on the management of a troubled Vietnam veteran, who believes he has been poorly treated by the system. The clash between a conniving bureaucrat and a compassionate but naive physician reaches all the way to the VA central office. This novel highlights a fundamental dissonance in health-care delivery and offers a timely commentary on some merits and some flaws in a government-run single-payer system.