Author: Tilda Shalof Publisher: McClelland & Stewart ISBN: 1551991411 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 354
Book Description
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.
Author: Echo Heron Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1451665563 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 382
Book Description
Chilling, revelatory, and compassionate, Echo Heron’s bestselling memoir offers a brutally honest account of her time as an idealistic nursing student, her entry into the workforce, and her rude awakening to the gritty realities of practice. Devoted to helping the most trying patients in some of the harshest medical environments—from emergency rooms to intensive care units—Heron boldly confronts the most serious medical dilemmas of our time. When does a patient have the right to end his or her life, how can a medical professional help someone evaluate such a decision, and what can a nurse do when doctors don’t have their patients’ best interests at heart? These are just a few of the critical though deeply uncomfortable questions with which Heron must grapple.
Author: Echo Heron Publisher: Ivy Books ISBN: 0804118213 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 417
Book Description
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.
Author: Echo Heron Publisher: Sphere ISBN: 9780751513516 Category : Intensive care nursing Languages : en Pages : 563
Book Description
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.
Author: Cortney Davis Publisher: ISBN: Category : Literary Collections Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
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.
Author: James Kelly Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 0801467640 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 247
Book Description
"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.
Author: Philip Woodrow Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134191200 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 734
Book Description
This completely updated and revised new edition is specially written for qualified nurses working in intensive care nursing units. Fully comprehensive and developed to be as accessible as possible it contains four new chapters with valuable new and updated clinical scenarios to aid learning. Intensive Care Nursing is structured in user-friendly sections. Each chapter contains 'fundamental knowledge' needed to understand the chapter, an introduction, 'implications for practice', a chapter summary, completely updated further reading, 'time out' sections for revision and a clinical scenario with questions included. This second edition has been fully developed and reviewed by practitioners and teachers, as well as a senior pharmacist and covers: patient-focused issues of bedside nursing the technical knowledge necessary to care safely for ICU patients the more common and specialized disease processes and treatments encountered how nurses can use their knowledge and skills to develop their own and others' practice. A support website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415373239 links to other important sites, gives answers to the clinical scenario questions and provides a forum for discussion of important clinical issues. Written by a practice development nurse with a strong clinical background in intensive care nursing and experience of teaching nursing, Intensive Care Nursing is essential reading for nurses and health professionals working with high dependency patients.
Author: Echo Heron Publisher: Ivy Books ISBN: 0307560538 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 416
Book Description
As the healthcare debate rages on with the growth of the HMO industry, nurses quietly continue to provide the day-to-day grit and deeply-felt passion that hold the healing profession together. Within these remarkable women and men are poignant, outrageous stories drawn from the edge of life. But fear of career backlash and reprisals have made them reluctant to talk to outsiders about their experience. Now Echo Heron, New York Times bestselling author of Intensive Care, draws truths far stranger than fiction out of her colleagues--and allows the nurses to speak to us in their own words. Ranging from inspiring to tragic to outrageously funny, these narratives are real life medical dramas as experienced by nurses across the country--each practicing in a variety of specialties, including cardiac care, labor and delivery, burns, the ER--even a nurse who works in dolphin care. Tending Lives portrays a penitentiary nurse responsible 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, the moment-by-moment memories of several nurses who served in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing--gripping accounts that give us new perspectives on the horror and heroism of that nightmare day. Pediatric nurses, psychiatric nurses, home-care nurses, intensive care nurses--all with distinct voices and unique stories to tell. 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.
Author: Tilda Shalof
Author: Echo Heron
Author: Echo Heron
Author: Echo Heron
Author: Echo Heron
Author: Cortney Davis
Author: Julie Fairman
Author: James Kelly
Author: Philip Woodrow
Author: Echo Heron