Travel back to the 1960s and walk the halls of Chicago’s Cook County Hospital with Douglas R. Gracey, a medical intern eager to learn the ways of medicine, help patients and impress his colleagues.
Back then, medical education was different. Diagnosis was not so certain, treatment options were severely limited and patients, for the most part, expected less from their doctors.
The patients at Cook County Hospital had to deal with poverty, racial discrimination and social stigma in addition to the symptoms caused by their diseases. The county system was the only realistic option for pregnant black women and other marginalized members of society. The hospital also faces dilemma as they suffer from poor management, rampant patronage, payroll padding and contract rigging.
Join Gracey in Chicago, where he must learn how to succeed in a broken system while providing care to his patients. Along the way, find out how medical education has changed in Intern in the Promised Land: True Stories from Cook County Hospital.
