Book review: The Shift is a compelling memoir of a day in the life of a nurse
Theresa Brown doesn't overdo the drama but lets her riveting story speak for itself
Medical schools typically send out books to their incoming first-year class to give students a glimpse of the profession they're about to embark upon. This book should also be required reading for all incoming medical and nursing students - or anyone who is a patient or visitor in a hospital.
A clinical nurse who lives in Philadelphia's Point Breeze, Theresa Brown takes readers through a typical 12-hour day on a local oncology ward. Through her clear and compelling narrative, readers will gain a new appreciation of what is involved in being a nurse on the front lines of modern health care and the colossal responsibility nurses have in caring for very sick patients in our highly regulated, complicated and confounding times.
In , she begins her day with a 4km bike ride to work before sunrise on a brisk November morning. "Biking to the hospital gives me an unexpected patina of toughness, which matters in health care," she writes. "Hospitals are filled with caring staff, but resilience and determination are prized as high as empathy."
From the moment she clocks in at 7.03am, her day will be a whirlwind of tough decisions, tense moments, fear, doubt, heartache, compassion and joy. She receives papers on the patients she'll care for that day.
It seems like a manageable load until Brown is notified that Candace will also be one of her patients. Candace is what's known as a Pita - Pain in the Ass - because of her frequent demands that keep nurses as busy as two normal patients.
