How do Nurses really feel about their work? Do they become distant and uninvolved with pain and suffering to protect themselves from self-destruction over the years? Do they genuinely care what happens to their patients or is it merely a calloused race to the finish line of quitting time each shift?
Any reader who has laid in a hospital bed or had a loved one hospitalized will be able to immediately relate to this book and it's lovingly detailed descriptions of the events unfolding in the lives of both patients and their primary caregivers, the Nursing staff.
There are surprises; this is not a pink, warm fuzzy diary but a visceral accounting of the true struggle to maintain humanity and compassion in an environment that runs the risk of becoming immune to it's own drama. The pieces are delivered in the format of often graphic prose and poetry and forward the unexpected combination of pathos and hope. Expect to need tissues as a reading aid.
This is a book not only for the lay public but for the health care professions as well; it normalizes the extraordinary experiences of those whose work it is to sustain and save life, whose charge is to heal and to help. There is reassurance in each line of these pages and it should be required reading for all nursing students and health care professionals in addition to being a primer for all those whose life leads them through illness, either in a hospital bed or beside it.
