Intensive Care

In this collection, 65 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. The nurses in this anthology write to hold fast to a patient's memory, to say what it's like when a nurse becomes the caregiver to a family member, or to tell what happens when a nurse becomes a patient, suddenly confronting mortality from the other end of the stethoscope. They share with us what is almost impossible to talk about - how being present with a patient can transform not only that patient's life but the nurse's life as well. This work is a contribution to the medical humanities canon and to literature as a whole.