Reflections Of A Medical Surgical Nurse The Patient Short Poems

Reflections of a Medical-Surgical Nurse is a collection of poems written by a nurse about everyday interactions with patients. This reflective book, though light and easy to read, others an insight into some of the essential aspects of patients and patient care in a subtle way. A compilation of poems not only for nurses, but also a thoughtful read for all. Caring for patients is a privilege. They entrust their lives to clinicians during some of their most vulnerable times. Each one of them deserves excellent care. It is not a one-person mission; it takes a whole team. Patients may not always say it, but they never forget the kind of care they received.

"Fifty nurses discuss various aspects of student nursing and provide historical perspective on nursing and nursing education through personal essays and poems"--

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.

Offering life- and career-changing moments in nurses’ lives, the 80 true stories in Reflections on Nursing reveal nursing at its most demanding and fulfilling. Written mainly by nurses offering care at home, hospital, or hospice, these first-person stories convey the professional burdens, personal growth, and inner realizations found in the course of patient care. Whether you are a new or experienced practitioner, or just fascinated by nursing care in action, these inspiring true stories show nursing as both professional and life experience, and often, as an inspired journey. Experience the challenges and hard-earned wisdom of these real-life nursing moments: · Written by or about nurses of all experience levels and in numerous care settings, including stories about memorable nurses written by patients, family members, and doctors · Dive into these engrossing short stories, and go on a journey with: the nurse who inspires dignity and strength in a young soldier who is losing his wife the young nurse who stands up to a bullying preceptor the nurse who realizes her best friend, a fellow nurse, is stealing drugs from their unit the nurse struggling to give adequate care to seven patients at once on an understaffed unit the retired doctor who recalls the nurse who saved him, as a young intern, from mishandling a crucial situation with a dying patient the nurse who takes on an angry patient with a challenging case, to offer special help and encouragement nurses who become a patient The nurse/administrator who pushes hard for administrative decisions that will support nurses and improve patient care the inspiring patients who help nurses remember why they became a nurse

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

This text aims to be useful and relevant for student nurses from all backgrounds with a range of professional aspirations. It demonstrates the importance of psychology in both the nursing role and in health care in general.