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A review by liralen
The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital by Alexandra Robbins
3.0
Robbins is one of those authors for whom I don't care all that much what the subject is—the book is likely to be interesting regardless. [b:Pledged|160098|Pledged The Secret Life of Sororities|Alexandra Robbins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1417411958s/160098.jpg|25899] and [b:The Overachievers|25575|The Overachievers The Secret Lives of Driven Kids|Alexandra Robbins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1430499699s/25575.jpg|1286112] are both books that I've reread multiple times; I enjoy the breadth of research mixed with personal stories. (As a non-Robbins example, [b:What It Takes to Pull Me Through|861285|What It Takes to Pull Me Through Why Teenagers Get in Trouble and How Four of Them Got Out|David L. Marcus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387735767s/861285.jpg|846715] worked well for me for the same reasons.)
The Nurses is a tricky one. It's the same basic idea as the books mentioned above: follow a small group of people for roughly a year; construct a narrative with research and other anecdotal stories; fit the pieces into an entertaining, informative book. It's just, this one seems a tad biased.
I think of Pledged as a book where the author worked pretty hard to, if not avoid biases altogether, let the reader come to their own conclusions about sororities. I think of The Overachievers as a book where there isn't a huge risk of bias to begin with. But here: [This book] is meant to represent nurses' perspectives and to celebrate them (25).
The four ER nurses Robbins follows are the bones of the book, as you might expect; the reader is meant to get invested in them and their stories. Sometimes that is at the expense of other characters in the book. Charlene, a nursing supervisor, is introduced to the reader as 'insufferable' (27) and 'Scatterbrained and prone to favoritism' (30). If she has depth, it doesn't show. If this book were your introduction to nursing and doctor/patient relations, you might come away with the impression that doctors are all egotistical bullies (except for the very few who are reasonable human beings) and nurses are all belaboured, hard-working, intelligent saints who don't receive their due (except for the very few who are lazy bullies).
(Don't get me wrong: I think nurses have a tremendously challenging job in more ways than one, and this is hardly the first thing I've read to suggest that they're underappreciated and overworked. I just wanted more nuance.)
Oh, I don't know. The anecdotes are interesting—in some cases a lone anecdote could be the starting point for a much longer piece—but...not misleading, exactly, but without adequate context. A nurse in India commits suicide following her hospital's lack of response to a doctor sexually harassing her (51)—which is unacceptable in any context, but doesn't address the fact that sexual harassment (and response to it) is a giant problem in India in general. Telling me that more than half of nurses in a survey in South Korea have been sexually harassed (also page 51) doesn't tell me much because I don't know what the statistics are like in South Korea to begin with. Or this: In an unscientific poll for the purpose of this book, I asked more than 100 nurses whether they or any of the nurses they worked with had engaged in a sexual relationship with a doctor, nurse, or other coworker. Eighty-seven percent said yes (78). I know she agreed that it was unscientific, but—how does that compare to other workplaces with hundreds of workers? And if she asked people who worked at the same hospitals, what's to say that they aren't all thinking of the same nurse who happens to be boffing a doctor?
Last grumpy comment, and then I'll move on: Patiently explaining gallows humour and the idea that doctors and nurses use it (189) insults my intelligence. So does describing the 'July effect' as 'a major secret about hospital life' (258).
Despite all my grumpiness...while I would recommend reading other books about medicine in addition to this, I would recommend The Nurses as an accessible read that's sympathetic to a profession that doesn't always get much respect. I met a woman last year, at a college reunion, who told me she was a nurse—and then said, apologetically, that she knew it was a stereotypically 'female' and 'caring' profession... I asked her if she enjoyed the work, and she said yes. And isn't that largely what counts? It seemed so sad to me that she was devaluing work she obviously valued (and which, you know, is difficult and necessary and, well, valuable) because she thought other people wouldn't value it. Not too much of that here.
The Nurses is a tricky one. It's the same basic idea as the books mentioned above: follow a small group of people for roughly a year; construct a narrative with research and other anecdotal stories; fit the pieces into an entertaining, informative book. It's just, this one seems a tad biased.
I think of Pledged as a book where the author worked pretty hard to, if not avoid biases altogether, let the reader come to their own conclusions about sororities. I think of The Overachievers as a book where there isn't a huge risk of bias to begin with. But here: [This book] is meant to represent nurses' perspectives and to celebrate them (25).
The four ER nurses Robbins follows are the bones of the book, as you might expect; the reader is meant to get invested in them and their stories. Sometimes that is at the expense of other characters in the book. Charlene, a nursing supervisor, is introduced to the reader as 'insufferable' (27) and 'Scatterbrained and prone to favoritism' (30). If she has depth, it doesn't show. If this book were your introduction to nursing and doctor/patient relations, you might come away with the impression that doctors are all egotistical bullies (except for the very few who are reasonable human beings) and nurses are all belaboured, hard-working, intelligent saints who don't receive their due (except for the very few who are lazy bullies).
(Don't get me wrong: I think nurses have a tremendously challenging job in more ways than one, and this is hardly the first thing I've read to suggest that they're underappreciated and overworked. I just wanted more nuance.)
Oh, I don't know. The anecdotes are interesting—in some cases a lone anecdote could be the starting point for a much longer piece—but...not misleading, exactly, but without adequate context. A nurse in India commits suicide following her hospital's lack of response to a doctor sexually harassing her (51)—which is unacceptable in any context, but doesn't address the fact that sexual harassment (and response to it) is a giant problem in India in general. Telling me that more than half of nurses in a survey in South Korea have been sexually harassed (also page 51) doesn't tell me much because I don't know what the statistics are like in South Korea to begin with. Or this: In an unscientific poll for the purpose of this book, I asked more than 100 nurses whether they or any of the nurses they worked with had engaged in a sexual relationship with a doctor, nurse, or other coworker. Eighty-seven percent said yes (78). I know she agreed that it was unscientific, but—how does that compare to other workplaces with hundreds of workers? And if she asked people who worked at the same hospitals, what's to say that they aren't all thinking of the same nurse who happens to be boffing a doctor?
Last grumpy comment, and then I'll move on: Patiently explaining gallows humour and the idea that doctors and nurses use it (189) insults my intelligence. So does describing the 'July effect' as 'a major secret about hospital life' (258).
Despite all my grumpiness...while I would recommend reading other books about medicine in addition to this, I would recommend The Nurses as an accessible read that's sympathetic to a profession that doesn't always get much respect. I met a woman last year, at a college reunion, who told me she was a nurse—and then said, apologetically, that she knew it was a stereotypically 'female' and 'caring' profession... I asked her if she enjoyed the work, and she said yes. And isn't that largely what counts? It seemed so sad to me that she was devaluing work she obviously valued (and which, you know, is difficult and necessary and, well, valuable) because she thought other people wouldn't value it. Not too much of that here.