In my quest, as a nurse, to become a writer of memoir, I learned the importance of first sentences: to draw the reader into the story immediately. Think of the classics: “Call me Ishmael” (Melville's Moby Dick) and "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” (Dickens's A Tale of Two …
Category: nurse
Fire Safety — A Nurse Grandma’s Scare
The next time you’re moaning about having to attend a mandatory fire safety program, interrupting your day, at your workplace, think about this story. The other night I was babysitting for my daughter’s two children under two on the 13th floor of a high rise her family was renting for vacation. I was burping the …
Nursing Faculty Shortage
I was thrilled yesterday (5/30/11) to find an article titled “Jobs in Health Care on the Rise” in the Business section of the Chicago Tribune. In a discussion of the need for more doctors, Christopher J. Gearon notes that more of their jobs are being held by nurse practitioners and physician assistants who also are …
Mental Health America: May is Mental Health Month 2011
Did you know that 60 million Americans are diagnosed with a mental health condition in any given year, that’s 1in4. Learn more at http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/may. Read the simple "handout" above to see what you can learn and how you can help friends or family members living with mental illness. With a simple gesture of increasing our …
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Clara Barton founds Red Cross on this day in 1881
She was a nurse without credentials. On this day in 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. When Clara was only 10, her brother David fell off the roof of the family barn. At first, he seemed fine, but the next day he developed a headache and fever. The doctor diagnosed "too much blood" …
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Fighting the Stigma of Mental Illness
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If your loved one is diagnosed with mental illness, would you know where you and your family could go to learn about the illness and how to be of help to that person? When I was a med-surg nurse and encountered questions about living with a mental illness, I …
Writers: Write What You Know
"Write what you know" was standard advice in the writing classes I took as a beginning writer. I felt smug about the advice because I was planning to write a memoir of my nursing career, so, naturally, I knew my topic from head to toe very well. I did not hear a second part to …
Book Promotion – A Tribute to Amy
The e-mail was unexpected. The subject line - "Looks like we're having cereal for supper cuz Mom can't stop reading this book:)" - stopped my hand on the mouse. Should I open it? The sender's name, Amy Nagelkirk, was not familiar. Amy identified herself as a former nursing student of mine, since married, at Trinity …
The Nurse as Writer
For twenty-some years I taught nursing students. The curriculum in the four colleges where I taught addressed the different roles of the nurse, such as the nurse as caregiver, teacher, researcher, leader. Not once--and I chaired or had input into curriculum committees all of those years--did I think of addressing the potential role of the …
Write Along with Me 