“I wasn’t strong like this when I started out: True stories of becoming a nurse”
It is a book which is based on true stories relating the nursing experience of different people. There is a girl who is telling a story about her mother that how she spend her time being as a nurse, the girl told that her mother was an old fashioned nurse she did not have any kind of degree which is required to become a nurse but except from all this her name was written in golden words on ivory vellum. She further added that her mother told her that before the time of neonatal intensive care units, it was the golden period of the nursing, during the World War 2 there was a shortage of doctors and most of the people were suppose to be responsible for their own selves.
Another nurse who was 30 years old named Tilda Shalof said that there is a tension between the trained and university educated nurses and the other who are not educated, but she further added that the nurses who are in this field for a very long while and also do not have any degree in becoming a nurse, but they have got such experience that they know how to tackle and take care of the patients and she really wanted to be like them and also to become one of them as those nurses knows how to get the job done completely and perfectly (Parahoo, 2006).
It was noticed that many of the nurses were mostly the part time writers or bloggers. In this book the writer talk to Mr. Gutkind, the editor of a literary magazine and writer in residence at Arizona State University about the nurses who are mostly the part time writers, there was a common thought that why nurses are writers, because they are so much busy in their work and they did not get enough time to talk about how work they actually do in nursing, so for that reason the nurses mostly write blogs. Today there are 2.7 million nurses who are working and are also registered in United States. As there are only 690,000 doctors, physicians and surgeons, it has been estimated that the rate of nursing will increase to 3.5 million in next few years (Parahoo, 2006). Mr. Gutkind also said that there are baby boomers of the time of World War 2 needs hospitalization and home cares, including nursing in it. Mr. Gutkind have selected nearly 21 essays from 200 entries on nursing that influences his practices, he wrote that he had spent many years in different hospitals, he mentioned that his uncle, mother, son and a friend never or rarely visited to the physicians (Parahoo, 2006). He said that nurses are irreplaceable with doctors because they are the source of comfort, care and safety during the time of his family’s trials. He also said that he took the nurses for granted but he did not know that from where did they belongs to, what was their names and what was their ages, just like his mother told him about 65 years ago.
Another story of nursing in about Ms. Lukens, her first encounter with the patient was that she has to give an injection to a lady who was suffering from breast cancer, at the time of making decision Ms. Lukens supervisor looked at her and asked that what would she do with a women who is dying with the cancer, would she give her medicine of should left the patient dying? <s. Lukens replied that I will do it and her supervisor was impressed by her work and decision making abilities. Ms. Lukens herself says that whatever she did was a good work.
Another nurse named Mr. Thomas Schwarz, he was also a nurse but like the other nurses he was also a writer, he wrote about his work experience that how people loved him, sat with him, watch TV along him, he further wrote that he was the midwife for the next life for someone.
All the stories does reveal some kind of new experience that was faced by the different nurses, everyone has got her own and unique stories regarding their journey towards becoming a nurse, whether a nurse with a degree or without a degree but has got a lot of experience that how to take care of patients. All of them shared their experiences when they saw a birth for the first time, or a death, or a car accident, their first experiences were become one of those moments which were unforgettable, and those experiences also left some sort of reflections on their minds.
The stories that have been shared in this book, all were related and interconnected with each other’s stories in a sense of passion, strength, care, experiences, emotions and skills and the nurses also serves to their patients with pure love, empathy and strength.
References
Parahoo, K. (2006). Nursing research: principles, process and issues. Palgrave Macmillan.
