Nursing America: One Year Behind the Nursing Stations of an Inner-City Hospital Hardcover - 2005 - 1st Edition

by Sandy Balfour

The world of nursing as seen through the prism of eight nurses' lives over the course of a year working at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee.

Nursing is one of the fastest-growing occupations in the United States. What draws people to this most challenging of professions? And what is it like to return, day after day, to a place where lives hang in the balance? In Nursing America, Sandy Balfour describes the daily joy and discouragement, hope and despair experienced by eight nurses, each from one of the different specialty units of an inner-city hospital.

"Nobody ever came to the hospital to see a nurse," points out one of the nurses in this book. Yet it is often the nurses whom the patients never forget. From the painstaking job of providing people with care and compassion to the intricate doctor-nurse relationships, the nursing profession brings new meaning to the term "people skills." Balfour addresses the current climate in hospitals, in which funding is becoming more and more scarce, and its effects on nursing.

In this refreshingly candid and intriguing account, Balfour takes readers to the front lines of nursing to reveal the men and women who work in this fascinating field.