What's your favorite nursing book? (Non textbook)

Nurses General Nursing

Published

I enjoy reading books written by nurses about the profession. The stories they tell give a glimpse of what it's really like to be on the front line.

Currently, I am just taking my pre-reqs so I have a little time during the day to pick up a good non-textbook. What was your favorite nursing book of stories?

proud, i bought 5 patients a while back and had the hardest time finishing it. i thought it was just me. maybe because i wasn't around when the book was written...i dunno. :confused:

You must be just about my age. I am going to take it back to Barnes and Noble today. What a bore! LOL

Probably couldn't get it easily in US but my vote goes to "From the Heart" (published by Lothian Books)

(Can buy it online at http://www.anf.org.au/publications/index_books.html if interested...)

This was originally a writing competition to try to get the public to have a better understanding of nursing as a profession. Mostly stories that really shaped the nurses' careers, both good and bad. The winning and highly recommended entries were published in this book. Real stories about acute, community, paeds, LTC, mental health, etc. Fantastic!

a must read...Tom's Year at the Nursing Home....by Theresa Edmond....a RN ;)

Specializes in ER, ICU, L&D, OR.

Howdy yall

from deep in the heart of texas

Yall, know. In all my years, I dont think Ive ever read a fictional book about nursing, just too busy studying the non fiction stuff, or studying golf

Keep it in the short grass yall

teeituptom

Two books just came to my mind.

"two pair of feet" and "two pair of hands" by Monica Dickens.

She is a great-great-(great)- daughter of Charles Dickens, she wrote these books back in the 50's. You'll get a good idea of the education nurses got in English hospitals.

And then of course the books of Sue Barton!! Loved those books as a girl!

Take care, Renee

I agree that Echo Heron is tops, but I also would give high marks to "JUST A NURSE" by Janet Kraegel. A great read!!

Regards,

Bill

Specializes in ICU/CCU (PCCN); Heme/Onc/BMT.

With the exception of textbooks, I don't know of any books about nursing. . . until I read this thread. Cool!

I do read a lot of literature about digital audio recording. But that's another thread. . . in fact, that's another Bulletin Board! :)

Ted

I also have to sing praises about Echo Herons books.....I ahve read and reread her books....she is wonderful.....

I would have to say that Suzanne Gordon's book: "Life support" is very good. Very explicit... Gives you basic meaning of some medical terms and so on. I would recommend it to the whoever's thinking about going into nursing or is in nursing school...

Any other good ones ? (apart from the famous Echo)

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Found this book listed at Health Affairs...looks good, now onto the hunt.

Book Review: Caring Sisters

By Barbra Mann Wall

Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century

by Sioban Nelson

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 233 pp., $55

In Say Little, Do Much, Sioban Nelson aims to integrate the contributions of religious women into the history of the rise of professional nursing. She concentrates on the experiences of English-speaking Catholic nuns, Anglican sisters, and Protestant deaconesses in the nineteenth century in North America, Britain, and Australia--the "vowed women" who separated themselves from the world and lived a communal life by following certain religious rules.

The opening chapter introduces the main theses of the book. First, religious nursing "has been formative of professional nursing in profound and far-reaching ways" (p. 1). Long before Florence Nightingale became a legend in the foundation of modern nursing, religious women organized home care, created and administered hospitals, and volunteered their time and work (and sometimes their lives) in military and epidemic nursing. With roots in seventeenth-century France under Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity, these women made nursing a skilled activity that became the guide for future nurses. Second, rather than seeing an explicit divide between the notions of "religious vocation" and "profession," Nelson argues that "nursing emerged as a hybrid religious and professional practice" (p. 6). Third, while the story begins with nurses in Europe, it takes a distinctive turn in the nineteenth-century New World, where women became skilled, professional, adaptable, and accountable nurses.

The author, who teaches at the University of Melbourne School of Postgraduate Nursing, questions why religious women were invisible, not only in the nineteenth-century context but also to historians of nursing today. Catholic sisters, in particular, have stirred little intellectual interest in contemporary society because their spiritual vows dictated gender constraints, asexuality, and submission of individuality--traits that are antithetical to the public image of the influential American woman. It is ironic, she asserts, that these same submissive traits were vital assets in the sisters' ability to wield influence and power within medical and nursing communities.

Full Review:

http://www.healthaffairs.org/freecontent/v21n3/s35.htm

Echo Heron!

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