Download or read book A Nurse s Story written by Tilda Shalof and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2005-02-22 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was known as “Laura’s Line.” They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also caring and incredibly committed to their jobs. Laura set the tone with her quick remarks. Frances, from Newfoundland, was famous for her improvised recipes. Justine, the union rep, wore t-shirts emblazoned with defiant slogans, like “Nurses Care But It’s Not in the Budget.” Shalof was the one who had been to university. The others accused her of being “sooo sensitive.” They depended upon one another. Working in the ICU was both emotionally grueling and physically exhausting. Many patients, quite simply, were dying, and the staff strove mightily to prolong their lives. With their skill, dedication, and the resources of modern science, they sometimes were almost too successful. Doctors and nurses alike wondered if what they did for terminally-ill patients was not, in some cases, too extreme. A number of patients were admitted when it was too late even for heroic measures. A boy struck down by a cerebral aneurysm in the middle of a little-league hockey game. A woman rescued – too late – from a burning house. It all took its toll on the staff. And yet, on good days, they thrived on what they did. Shalof describes a colleague who is managing a “crashing” patient: “I looked at her. Nicky was flushed with excitement. She was doing five different things at the same time, planning ahead for another five. She was totally focused, in her element, in control, completely at home with the chaos. There was a huge smile on her face. Nurses like to fix things. If they can.” Shalof, a veteran ICU nurse, reveals what it is really like to work behind the closed hospital curtains. The drama, the sardonic humour, the grinding workload, the cheerful camaraderie, the big issues and the small, all are brought vividly to life in this remarkable book.
Download or read book Intensive Care The Story of a Nurse written by Echo Heron and published by Ivy Books. This book was released on 1988-05-12 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a nurse's story unlike any other, because Echo Heron is a very special nurse. Dedicated to healing and helping in the harshest environments, she spent ten years in emergency rooms and intensive care units. Her story is unique, penetrating, and unforgettable. Her story is real. "Compelling reading." NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Download or read book Tending Lives written by Echo Heron and published by Ivy Books. This book was released on 1999-01-30 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical-care nurse in coronary and emergency medicine for eighteen years, Echo Heron has seen and heard it all. Here she recounts narratives of real-life medical dramas experienced by nurses across the country, sharing with us the inspiring, the tragic, and the outrageously funny: a penitentiary nurse who wasresponsible for orchestrating a murderer's execution; a stroke victim who rose out of his depression when his nurses began telling him jokes; and, perhaps the most riveting testimony, moment-by-moment memories of several nurses who served in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. Filled with both tears and laughter and charged with the issues that afflict nursing care today, TENDING LIVES is a gripping, moving, inspiring book, a fitting tribute to a noble profession.
Download or read book Intensive Care written by Cortney Davis and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses, sixty-five nurses from places as diverse as California and Alaska, South America and Europe, tell us in tough, revealing poems and prose what it's like to be on the front lines of health care. These nurses, both men and women, speak to us from intensive care units and operating rooms, from patients' homes and storefront clinics, from hospitals with the latest technology to small clinics in the steamy jungles of Nicaragua. They tell us what it's like to walk in their shoes and see the drama of illness and healing unfold before their eyes.
Download or read book Critical Care Nursing written by Julie Fairman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2000-01-24 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A comprehensive, multifaceted book of astounding scope."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Download or read book Where Night Is Day written by James Kelly and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is no night in the ICU. There is day, lesser day, then day again. There are rhythms. Every twelve hours: shift change. Report: first all together in the big room, then at the bedside, nurse to nurse. Morning rounds. A group of doctors moves slowly through the unit like a harrow through a field. At each room, like a game, a different one rotates into the center. They leave behind a trail of new orders. Wean, extubate, titrate, start this, stop that, scan, film, scope. The steep hill the patient is asked to climb. Can you breathe on your own? Can you wake up? Can you live?"—Where Night Is Day Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average rotation of residents through the ICU. It begins in September and ends at Christmas. It is the story of patients and families, suddenly faced with critical illness, who find themselves in the ICU. It describes how they navigate through it and find their way. James Kelly is a sensitive witness to the quiet courage and resourcefulness of ordinary people. Kelly leads the reader into a parallel world: the world of illness. This world, invisible but not hidden, not articulated by but known by the ill, does not readily offer itself to our understanding. In this context, Kelly reflects on the nature of medicine and nursing, on how doctors and nurses see themselves and how they see each other. Drawing on the words of medical historians, doctor-writers, and nursing scholars, Kelly examines the relationship of professional and lay observers to the meaning of illness, empathy, caring, and the silence of suffering. Kelly offers up an intimate portrait of the ICU and its inhabitants.
Download or read book Condition Critical written by Echo Heron and published by Sphere. This book was released on 1994 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A non-fiction text that reads like a novel. A 15-year veteran of coronary care and emergency room nursing, Echo Heron works in a large city hospital, which she calls Redwoods Memorial. In this account, Heron describes nights spent, for example, tending victims of heart disease.
Download or read book The Nurse s Story written by Carol Gino and published by aaha! Books. This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With uncompromising honesty, Carol Gino strips the TV image to reveal the gritty truths of a nurse's life.
Download or read book A Nurse s Story written by Louise Curtis and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving, honest and inspiring – this is a nurse’s true story of life in a busy A&E department during the Covid-19 crisis. Working in A&E is a challenging job but nurse Louise Curtis loves it. She was newly qualified as an advanced clinical practitioner, responsible for life or death decisions about the patients she saw, when the unthinkable happened and the country was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. The stress on the NHS was huge and for the first time in her life, the job was going to take a toll on Louise herself. In A Nurse’s Story she describes what happened next, as the trickle of Covid patients became a flood. And just as tragically, staff in A&E were faced with the effects of lockdown on society. They worried about their regulars, now missing, and saw an increase in domestic abuse victims and suicide attempts as loneliness hit people hard. By turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, this book shines a light on the compassion and dedication of hospital staff during such dark times. 'An important memoir that we all need to read right now.' – Closer
Download or read book Critical Care written by Richard Dooling and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1996-06-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Werner Ernst, a second-year medical resident, encounters the stark realities of the modern intensive care unit, the fears and illusions of the loved ones of the terminally ill, and the exhaustion and irony of doctors, nurses, and technicians.
Download or read book The Shift written by Theresa Brown and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse but all the life that happens in just one day on a busy teaching hospital’s cancer ward. In the span of twelve hours, lives can be lost, life-altering treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. Unfolding in real time--under the watchful eyes of this dedicated professional and insightful chronicler of events--The Shift gives an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country. By shift’s end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and humanity.
Download or read book When the Nurse Becomes a Patient written by Cortney Davis and published by Literature & Medicine. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paintings and reflections that share a nurse's personal experience of illness In the summer of 2013, Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner and author who often writes about her interactions with patients, underwent routine one-day surgery. A surgical mishap led to a series of life-altering and life-threatening complications, resulting in two prolonged hospital stays and a lengthy recovery. During twenty-six days in the hospital, Davis experienced how suddenly a caregiver can become a care receiver and what it's like to be "on the other side of the sickbed." As a nurse, she was accustomed to suffering and to the empathy such witnessing can evoke, but as a patient she learned new and transforming lessons in pain, fear, loneliness, abandonment, and dependency; in the fragility of health and life; in the necessity of family support; and, ultimately, in the importance of gratitude. Once at home, Davis wanted to respond to her illness creatively through her writing, but the details seemed too intense, too raw for words. As her recovery progressed, she found release in painting, discovering an immediate connection between heart and hand, between memory and canvas. In a series of twelve paintings, she reenvisioned episodes of her illness, moments that remained and replayed in her consciousness, ultimately providing an education in health care more resonant and more authentic than what she had found in nursing textbooks. Before, serving as a nurse in intensive care, oncology, and women's health, Davis believed that she understood what hospitalized patients might be experiencing and how they might be coping. Her own illness taught her how little she truly knew and how important it is that all caregivers--professionals and family members alike--become aware of the physical and the inner emotional needs of their seriously ill patients. After the twelve paintings were completed, Davis wrote brief commentaries for each image. She used her remembrances to clarify and expand on her artwork, thereby making her personal story accessible to others. While every patient's journey and every caregiver's challenges are unique, these intimate and revealing paintings and reflections offer a glimpse into the universal aspects of illness and recovery.
Download or read book Quick Reference to Critical Care written by Nancy H. Diepenbrock and published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What began as a compilation of author notes from a real critical care hospital practice setting is now a pocket-sized powerhouse for critical care nurses and students! Quick Reference to Critical Care, 4th edition, provides thoroughly updated critical care content and updated cross-references with page numbers for even quicker reference and ease of use. Information is organized by body system, with each part presented alphabetically for fast, easy access. Full of fast facts, mnemonics, and over 200 images and tables!
Download or read book Healing written by Theresa Brown and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Deeply moving." --Damon Tweedy, New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat New York Times bestselling author Theresa Brown tells a poignant, powerful, and intensely personal story about breast cancer. She brings us along with her from the mammogram that would change her life through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, she finds herself continually surprised by the lack of compassion in the medical maze--just as so many of us have. Why is she expected to wait over a long weekend to hear the results of her cancer tests if they are ready? Where is the empathy from caregivers? Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? At times she's mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being labeled a "difficult" patient could mean she gets worse care. As she did in her book The Shift, Brown draws us into her work with the unforgettable details of her daily life--the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the frustrated patients--but from her new perch as a patient, she also takes a look back with rare candor at some of her own cases as a nurse and considers what she didn't know then and what she could have done better. A must-read for fans of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, Suleika Jaouad's Between Two Kingdoms, and all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system.
Download or read book Life Death and Biscuits written by Anthea Allen and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ‘A heart-breaking story of courage and compassion from the front line of the toughest battle our nurses have had to fight. Anthea Allen’s writing is raw, honest and full of love for those she cares for.’ Susanna Reid
Download or read book Titrate to Effect written by Anna Fares and published by 978-1-7350122-0-9. This book was released on 2020-05-20 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Daniela is the youngest of three daughters born to Dominican expats, growing up in New York City. After a chaotic childhood that nearly tore her mother and sisters apart, Daniela struggles to find her way in the world. After wanderlust and the need for change following a messy breakup leads her Upstate where she studies to become a nurse, Daniela slowly builds her life and her career outside of the confines of Manhattan. When things back home take a tragic turn, Daniela finds herself in the position of being the thread that holds her estranged sisters together. Titrate to Effect: A Nurse's Story of Life & Love in the Presence of Life & Death is the story of a nurse, and the impact of nursing on life and all that comes with it. It is an inside look at a world that few can truly understand, and how a calling to the profession shapes the one on the path as well as those that love and surround them. It is a story of a nurse finding her way, written by a nurse who knows the journey well.
Download or read book The Making of a Nurse written by Tilda Shalof and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2010-02-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of A Nurse’s Story is back with more insider stories. Tilda Shalof has been a caregiver all her life—at home for her family, at work for strangers—but her skills didn’t come easily. From when she was a child taking care of her sick parents to her current position on an ICU team in one of Canada’s largest hospitals, there have always been daunting challenges and worthy rewards for her work. With her trademark humour, unflinching honesty, and skilled storytelling, Shalof describes her experiences becoming the capable nurse she is today. After graduation from nurse’s college, finding no jobs in Toronto, Shalof travelled to Tel Aviv, Israel, to work in a hospital for the first time, finding adventure and young love in the process. A summer stint as a camp nurse came with requests for condoms, strange allergies, and overly protective parents. The Making of a Nurse contains these stories and much more, and they are comforting, entertaining, shocking, funny, heart-warming and heart-wrenching. From hospitals to home care, they will give readers a glimpse into the life of a nurse and the hidden medical world.
