A compelling read that’s aimed at a Canadian audience but will draw in anyone with an interest in practical aspects of...
A Canadian nurse with nearly 50 years’ experience sends out an alarm call to the general public about the future of her profession.
In this slim volume, Boucher gives readers a lot to unpack. She starts by briefly covering nurses’ duties (because, as she notes, “Even most colleagues I’ve talked to admitted that they didn’t fully understand what nurses do until they began their studies”) before describing various nursing specialties. She then turns to the profession’s benefits—competitive salaries, good benefits, and making a difference in people’s lives—as well as its challenges, including stress, and the fact that nursing shortages make everyone’s job more difficult. After briefly describing the education and training required, Boucher moves on to the most urgent issue for those on the job: avoiding burnout. One of the biggest problems that nurses face, she asserts, is the managerial practice of “floating,” in which they’re “moved from the departments they normally work in to an area that lacks adequate staff.” It can be demanding, and Boucher notes some simple ways to alleviate its difficulties, such as a uniform, hospital-wide color-coding system, so that every nurse knows what shelves contain which items in every department. The book finishes with a short chapter on what laypeople can do to help, and ends by challenging readers to “work together to elevate the nursing profession and cement its future.” All too often, when an expert writes about their work, the result is so dry or mired in jargon and technical detail that outsiders find it nearly impenetrable. However, Boucher’s prose is refreshingly engaging and thoughtful throughout. Her chapter on improving job retention particularly stands out; in it, she offers real-world examples of what has worked in real-world hospitals—the color-coding, for instance, in currently use in Ottawa—and then theorizes how ideas could go further and be more helpful. It quickly becomes evident that Boucher has thought about these issues in depth and that she cares for her fellow nurses deeply.
A compelling read that’s aimed at a Canadian audience but will draw in anyone with an interest in practical aspects of healthcare.Pub Date: April 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780995191020
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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