The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital

This book is very informative and eye-opening but also quite entertaining. I'm no stranger to the fact that modern nursing in the U.S. places inhuman expectations on its workers. My mom used to absolutely love her job as a nurse when she still lived in France but came to loath the profession after moving to the U.S. My mom found it especially insulting when, on top of the outrageous work load (and yes, never even having time to use the bathroom!), nurses would have to attend mandatory training sessions on 'time management.' So I am already quite familiar with many of the nurse complaints highlighted in the book: demanding, rude patients, snotty doctors, and ridiculous work loads. What is interesting to me (but is outside the scope of the book) is that my mom found patients in France to take far greater responsibility for their health than patients in the U.S. which also meant they tended to be much less accusatory and demanding. As someone now living abroad, I also get the sense that Americans are a special breed when it comes to their expectation that modern medicine is supposed to fix all their ailments without any simultaneous alterations in diet and lifestyle--it's deeply unfortunate that new legislative guidelines on patient satisfaction are only making things worse. I really hope that this book will get hospital administrators to truly start investing in healthcare where it counts.

Alexandra Robbins follows the life of four nurses and their direct experience working in the nursing profession. I was absolutely blown away by this inside look. Not only by how nurses are treated, but also how they treat each other. If this doesn't prove our healthcare system is broken, I don't know what would.Bottom line is profits as usual, so staffing is kept at the absolute minimum. We are talking about life and death situations, where corporations crunch numbers weighing the possibility of a wrongful death suite against huge profits from understaffing. Here's an awful fact, Bureau of Labor Statistics report nursing is the third most dangerous profession, behind police and correctional officers! Nurses are bullied by doctors, if they report, they may lose their job, if they don't patients may die. Nurses are bullied by other nurses who rip apart inexperienced workers. There is even a term for this, "nurses eat their young."Nurses are required to do every imaginable job, and often have no time to eat or even use the rest room in a 12 hour shift. Many have bladder problems by age 50. I could go on and on with the horrific pressure and positions nurses are put through. Bottom line though, I think this is a book that needs to be read. It is extremely informative and the personal stories practically had me in tears. I know one thing for sure, I will never treat a nurse with anything but the highest respect and admiration they deserve.

I am an RN with 25 years of hospital nursing. I left the profession is 2008 because I could not stomach our healthcare system and the way nurses treat nurses.....one....more....day. It was the hardest decision of my life, I still had 15 years I could have worked, job security, health care, pension, the all American dream. Now that I have been out of it for a while I am appalled at how much I put up with and I was a very outspoken nurse, unafraid to challenge what I thought was ethically wrong. Managed care changed everything and it became about how much money insurance companies would pay. I watched Drs. play the game of matching up the high dollar reimbursement to the patient, whether the patient needed it or not. If you think this is the exception, it is not. This book tells it like it is, like it really is and I am so happy Ms. Robbins wrote it. We, as a profession are not a cohesive group. There is backstabbing, cliques, blame shuffling, patient hoarding the list is endless. Between insecurities and an underlying co-dependence, we are a sick bunch. I was fortunate for many years in the middle of my career to work with a great group that were like extended family, covering one another, going to bat for each other and mutual trust and respect. This did not last. Nursing is a well paying profession for women. This is likely why most aren't brave enough to walk away and also why the decision to leave is so very difficult. Every nurse I know that has worked for 15 years or more would like to leave the profession but fear of financial insecurity stops them. I had no plan, no trust fund, no other income and no partner to rely on, yet when I realized that my job was making me physically ill combined with burn out and chronic stress, I felt that if I didn't leave, I surely would "catch" a major illness or die younger than I should. I realize that my view is somewhat jaded, and my choice is not going to suit most nurses, but the point to my review is to let all non-medical people reading this know that the profession of nursing is NOT what it has been portrayed as. It is very sad to me that nursing has evolved to this, but maybe now with some truths exposed, those that are in the profession can clean up the mess.

a must have for anyone in the medical industry

Good read

Wonderful book! Highly recommend.

A light read, not as good as I thought it would be. A bit hard to follow if reading it sporadically, as Robbins bounces back and forth between a number of characters, focusing more on the relationship dynamics between nurses than on the true drama of nursing (as led to believe by the title). Some may find it a bit disrespectful towards male nurses as she makes several references to 'murses'. A nice tribute to the nurses that she wrote about, but clearly not written by a nurse.

Told just the right amount of information.