You Went to Emergency for What?: Bizarre, bloody and baffling true stories from the hospital ED

by Tim Booth

Overview

Bizarre, bloody and baffling true stories from the hospital ED, told by bestselling author and paramedic Tim Booth.

When paramedic Tim Booth finds himself rushing a patient's dead cat to a (human) hospital's Emergency Department for resuscitation, he finds himself wondering where it all went wrong.

From bedroom mishaps and hypochondriacs to suspicious rashes and freak cattle incidents, the doctors, nurses and paramedics of our hospital EDs have seen everything. Every day, Tim and his colleagues battle burnout, an overburdened healthcare system and compassion fatigue, powered only by caffeine, dark humour and a heartfelt drive to save lives. But the moments of Hollywood heroism are few, as they struggle to navigate the chaotic, absurd and sometimes downright ridiculous side of emergency medicine.

Written like a night shift in Emergency - dark, unpredictable, and likely to make you question humanity's collective IQ - You Went to Emergency for What? reveals the weirdest, funniest and most heart-wrenching true stories of what really goes on in our hospitals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781761773365
Publisher:	Pan Macmillan Australia
Publication date:	07/29/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	952 KB

About the Author

Tim Booth, a former motoring journalist for Top Gear Australia, transitioned from writing about cars to driving ambulances, swapping flashy sports cars for lights and sirens. Now a seasoned intensive care paramedic, Tim spent six gruelling years in south-west Sydney, tending to everything from high-stakes traumas to the many ridiculous callouts that define emergency medicine. His first book, You Called an Ambulance for What?, exposed the chaotic, often ludicrous world of paramedicine he found there. Despite the long shifts and countless WTF moments, Tim still works as an ambo, now serving the slower-paced north coast of NSW - when he's not penning tales that barely stop short of career suicide.

Tim Booth has been a paramedic for more than nine years, working in some of the most challenging environments in New South Wales. As an intensive care paramedic, he spent six years in south-west Sydney, patching up the sickest, strangest, and silliest of patients who called 000 for all manner of trauma and triviality. Prior to his career in healthcare, Tim was a motoring journalist who worked for Top Gear Australia magazine.

After deciding he no longer wanted a 9-to-5 office job but still wanted to drive like The Stig, Tim switched the flashy Mercedes sports cars for Mercedes vans with flashing lights and left the media industry to study paramedicine. Honing his craft in the rough and demanding suburbs of Sydney's south-west, such as Bankstown, Liverpool, and Campbelltown, Tim achieved the highest clinical level of paramedic - an intensive care paramedic - just three years into his career. After surviving the worst that the COVID-19 pandemic threw at the ambulance service, Tim left south-west Sydney to pursue a more leisurely pace as a paramedic on the north coast of NSW.

Tim's first book, You Called an Ambulance for What?, dived headfirst into the gritty, chaotic world of emergency medicine in south-west Sydney, a setting infamous for its high-stakes drama and absurdity. Writing it almost caused him more headaches than he'd had on the job, but Tim's knack for getting into sticky situations - and writing about them - has landed him here once more, ready to expose the bizarre and unvarnished reality of the emergency world all over again.

Somehow, he's still managing to hold down his job as a paramedic, provided he can keep his storytelling antics just shy of career suicide.