The Shift

 Theresa Brown wrote a book about her work on an oncology ward in a Boston hospital. The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patient's Lives is based on her experience with real patients but the names are changed and the details altered to protect their privacy. The author starts out by describing her commute to work via bicycle and ends, 12 hours later, with her ride home. She describes the relationships between doctors and nurses, phlebotomists and nurses,  and patient transporters and nurses. She talks about the diplomacy she uses to stay on good terms with other hospital employees in order to provide the best care for her patients. She talks about patients who are easy to get along with and patients who are PITA (pain in the a$$). Her description of the PITA patient has to be based on real experience because some of the situations she described are too bizarre to have been made up. According to the book, the author is really good at handling PITA patients because her calm, affirming politeness calms the patient down immediately. The author also writes about the incredible amount of time it takes to complete the computer requirements for each patient. Some of the things they are obliged to chart on make sense and some don't. What reason could there possibly be to complete a fall risk assessment every hour on every patient? This is a ridiculous requirement. For some reason the hospital requires three blood draws when checking the patient's blood type. Two blood draws are done and sent to the lab and the third one has to be drawn a half hour later. Why? The phlebotomist does not have time to come back to every patient a second time so they just take all three blood draws at once and have the nurse send the third one down a half hour later. As a nurse, the author wants to advocate for her profession so naturally she emphasizes the importance of keeping the work load low so that she can be thorough. She did sound very busy.  The author was a professor of English before she became a nurse. Sometimes she would veer off into philosophic literature and I would just skim those paragraphs. Overall it was an educational and entertaining book.