Rough Sleepers – Tracy Kidder

Proposed by Jeanne, we discussed Rough Sleepers at Jeanne & Bill’s on April 19, 2024. As a group we were impressed with Dr. Jim. Carolyn recalls that it was enlightening to her – especially the difference between “the homeless” and the “rough sleepers.” She remembers saying that working with Dr. Jim O’Connell would be crazy making because he did not seem to take responsibility for setting limits but left it to colleagues to do for him. Again, as in The Stranger in the Woods, there was some discussion about the role of the author in the narrative.

Goodreads:

In Rough Sleepers, Tracy Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.”

When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this book, we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most vulnerable citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.”