Book Review: "The Call of Nursing"

"The Call Of Nursing: Stories From the Front Line of Health Care" by William B. Patrick, is a timely and precious book that highlights the diverse voices of nurses employed in various aspects of an equally diverse profession. Created from a massive undertaking of in-depth interviews with its subjects, this book is a honorable transcription of nurses' spoken narratives onto the page. These stories are a moving testament to the power of nursing, and the continued power of storytelling in the 21st century. In the course of this worthy book, twenty-three nurses describe their work and the place that nursing holds in their personal and professional lives. From a New York-based wound care nurse to a maritime nurse employed on the USS Ponce to a hospice case manager in New Mexico, these nursing professionals wax both personal and poetic about their careers as nurses, the most trusted professionals in the United States.Melinda Casson, the aforementioned wound care and hyperbaric nurse, describes the so-called "gross factor" of wound care quite clearly:I don't think everybody is necessarily cut out for wound care. There can be a bit of the gross factor to it. All nurses have to be able to deal with bodily fluids to a certain extent, bout wound care can be extra smelly and slimy. In one case, I've had my hand inside somebody's chest cavity while they were awake and talking to me. In another, it was open-heart surgery gone awry, where the sternum didn't heal back together and everything...
Source: Digital Doorway - Category: Nurses Tags: book reviews books nurse nurses nursing nursing books Source Type: blogs