“Compelling and compassionate human drama. If you want to understand how modern medicine ticks, fasten your seat belt and spend a day in the hospital with Theresa Brown onThe Shift.” —Danielle Ofri, MD, author of What Doctors Feel
In a book as eye-opening as it is riveting, practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse but all the life that happens in just one day on a busy teaching hospital's cancer ward. In the span of twelve hours, lives can be lost, life-altering treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. Every day, Theresa Brown holds these lives in her hands. On this day, there are four.
Unfolding in real time under the watchful eyes of Theresa Brown--a dedicated nurse and an insightful chronicler of events--we are given an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country. By shift's end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and humanity.
“The ultimate fly-on-the-wall experience. Theresa Brown has succeeded in serving up a thoroughly engrossing view of the everyday in an American hospital.”—Pauline W. Chen, MD, author of Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections on Mortality
“I am filled with awe and gratitude for the work that the nurses like Theresa Brown do every day. She captures perfectly their central role in any patient's life!” —Susan M. Love, MD, chief visionary officer, Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, and author of Dr Susan Love's Breast Book
“Captures the juxtaposition of pragmatism and idealism, compassion and clinical objectivity, humor and heartache, that exist simultaneously in the life of clinical nurses everywhere.” —Barbara L. Summers, Nursing Department chair, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas
