Nursing is more than a career; it is a calling. Nurses are remarkable. Yet contemporary literature largely neglects them.



When I started reading this book I loved it. Alexandra Robbins writes very well. For non-fiction this book reads better than some fiction I've read. She makes the nurses she followed for a year real and easy to understand. I have sorta been on a non-fiction kick lately. If I keep up this shit I'm gonna get smart. Well, not.


This book follows four nurses throughout a year. Some in their personal lives and most in their lives in the hospital.
Molly, a nurse that quits her hospital because she is frustrated with all the new regulations being put on nurses and becomes an agency nurse. Meaning she floats around to different hospitals hoping to find one that is a fit for her.
Lara, a nurse who has undergone an addiction to the very painkillers that she administers to her patients.
Sam, a new nurse who is a quiet introvert in a world that nurses sometimes "eat their own." --I hate that this happens but it honestly does. New nurses are automatically not trusted on the floor and must earn their stripes from nurses that have been doing this for years.
And Juliette, an overweight and very hardworking nurse who gets excluded from the mean girl clique at the hospital. Yes, nurses do form highschoolish cliques-even though we are supposed to be in a helping field it still happens.
Too frequently, certain nurses and techs called in sick, then posted vacation pictures on Facebook. Or they were unprofessional: Lucy, the laziest tech in the unit, had refused to do lab work on patients she deemed too "gross" to touch.


Robbins does give an insight to nursing that you aren't going to hear about from your nursing teacher. She tells some of the behind the scenes secrets even when they are not flattering to the nursing field.
Like we use gallow humor, sometimes that's the only way to get through the day and it gets pretty gross. It doesn't mean we don't love our patients.


Nurses are not sex kittens. TV and movies even still portray nurses as the sex goddesses of the nursing world.

Today's nurses wear scrubs that might be stained with blood, urine, or various other un-arousing substances. A male nurse in Virginia said, "We're sweaty and smelly and covered in germs" Sounds sexy doesn't it?

We do bet on your blood alcohol levels, how many times you are going to call back and ask the same things over and over again and several other things.


We really don't have the time to spend running back and forth because you are bored and need unwarranted attention. Nurses are understaffed. Not necessarily sitting there playing games while you don't have the right amount of ice in your water.


We have bad days, we get needle stuck, hit by patients, overworked, ignored by upper management. The list goes on...


Now all that sounds kinda mean coming from some one who's job is to take care of people all day or night doesn't it? It's not. Nurses will fight for you. They will stand up to that doctor who they question, they will stay after shift just to help you if needed. Nursing is a calling. Take the time to tell your nurse thank you. They don't get enough praise and she will go that extra mile for you. She or he will probably go that mile anyways but some niceness in a crazy world is ALWAYS appreciated.



Now there is a passage in this book that I'm calling bullshit on. I work in a doctors office. I see medical assistants that are way more trained than some of the LPN's in that same office. I work with a group of medical assistants that are all above level. We do have an LPN working there that is dumb as a box of rocks. Sorry, I'm calling it as I see it on that one. This part is bull.
Parents call to ask the nurse a medical question about their child. The medical assistants, who are not nurses, pick up the phone, say, "Hello, this is the nurse," and then give advice, she said. "This is illegal and dangerous. Parents have no idea this is going on. MA's have taken a one- or two-year certificate training course, may not have a college degree, and do not have a license. I've heard them give incorrect advice."
I'm not saying that all medical assistants are the bomb-diggity, but this just seemed snooty to the ones that are not.

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review.