War Doctor: Surgery on the Front Line

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I’d need a fantastic breadth of knowledge in general surgery, which I was on the way to achieving. And I realized it would also be good to know a lot about vascular surgery, too: if I was to spend time in dangerous places, I’d be seeing and dealing with a lot of injuries from bullets or bombs, and knowing how to clamp off blood vessels would be essential.” This is a book of extraordinary honesty . . . enlightening, sobering, compelling. It is a marvellous read, and education in itself -- Pat Ashworth * Church Times * This is a book full of medical marvels and the worst of human depravity during a war. I would have given this 5 stars had the last 20% not become overly political.

People, especially in the UK and Europe, need to understand why Syria's mass exodus started and why the prosecution at the hands of the EU and danger of death whilst crossing the Mediterranean was the far more preferred option than staying in the hands of Assad, who is himself a British trained doctor. The cathartic role a war doctor plays is brilliantly chronicled by the author. This book is a reminder to world leaders and organizations like the UN about the importance of taking conciliatory measures to prevent war between nations to establish concord in this world. I have read enough about Syria to know what was going on there but reading Dr David Nott’s account and those of his colleagues out there just highlighted how awful that situation really was. Civilians caught in the middle of a horrible civil war and then ISIS arrive. The injuries from the barrel bombs and snipers were brutal. No wonder Dr Nott had a hard time on his return to the UK. He witnessed some seriously messed up stuff. The author was cogent in explaining the important role of war doctors and tells us the significance of acquiring the necessary expertise before going into the battlefields as a war doctor. Ability to work with minimal resources is the most essential quality that a war doctor should possess. He also tells us the importance of having a strong mind as the patients we have to deal with due to the war injuries are entirely different from those we regularly treat in hospitals and clinics.Riveting . . . Nott is no ordinary doctor, as this dramatic telling of his extraordinary life makes clear -- Ian Birrell * The Times * It sort of read a little bit like audio description for TV or a school student reading out their oral presentation book report, index card by index card. We’re hardly short of books by doctors describing difficult work carried out in straitened circumstances – think Rachel Clarke’s Your Life in My Hands or Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt– but Nott’s is something else entirely. Where most people strive to avoid trouble, he actively goes in search of it. “It is a kind of addiction,” he says in the prologue, “a pull I find hard to resist.” His stories of courage and compassion in the face of seemingly certain death are breathtaking. There’s the time, for instance, that Syrian jihadis stormed the makeshift hospital in which he was working after spotting him on the roof with a camera. Assuming he was photographing their movements, they were poised to drag him away but were persuaded not to on realising that the camera contained pictures of sunsets. Or there’s the moment he and his head nurse were driven to meet Mullah Omar, the feared Taliban leader, to secure permission to operate on a young Afghan woman who was haemorrhaging after childbirth. “His manner was serene, almost statesman-like,” Nott recalls. “I think just to get rid of us, he agreed to our request.”

A devastating account of two decades volunteering his services to some of the world's most dangerous places -- Helen Brown, Daily Mail Doing humanitarian work in a warzone is all kinds of crazy and leaves the volunteers with PTSD for years afterwards. The #1 internationally bestselling, gripping true story of a frontline trauma surgeon operating in the world's most dangerous war zones Description: For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital. wars most affect those who are worst equipped to deal with them: people who are poor or disenfranchised, living in inadequate or unsanitary conditions with few of the amenities we take for granted in the West. War can make an already difficult existence impossible.

The writing is precise and succinct but retains a compassion for the suffering of those whose lives have been stripped to a struggle to survive in unimaginable conditions. Details of the medical procedures are fascinating and described in accessible language. And yet, with so many wars included there is a feeling of despair when considering what man is capable of inflicting. Nott admits that his work has left him in need of therapy for PTSD.