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    Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between
    Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between
    Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between
    Audiobook5 hours

    Critical Care: A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between

    Written by Theresa Brown

    Narrated by Coleen Marlo

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In her former career as an English professor, Theresa Brown had been shielded from the harsh reality of death. That all changed the day she decided to become an oncology nurse. In Critical Care, Theresa writes powerfully
    and honestly about her first year on the hospital floor. With great compassion and a disarming sense of humor, she shares the trials and triumphs of her patients and comes to realize that caring for a patient means much more than
    simply treating a disease. Deeply moving and, at times, sobering, Critical Care sheds light on the issues of mortality and meaning in our lives.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 16, 2016
    ISBN9781515980575
    Author

    Theresa Brown

    Theresa Brown, R.N., lives and works in the Pittsburgh area. She received her B.S.N. from the University of Pittsburgh and, during what she calls her past life, a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago. Brown is a regular contributor to the New York Times blog "Well." Her essay "Perhaps Death Is Proud; More Reason to Savor Life" was included in The Best American Science Writing 2009 and The Best American Medical Writing 2009. Critical Care is her first book. She lives with her husband, Arthur Kosowsky, their three children, and their dog.

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    Reviews for Critical Care

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Theresa Brown was an English professor at Tufts University who did not find her passion until she met the nurse-midwives whoo assisted at the birth of her children. She made a mid-life career change and became an oncology floor nurse. This is the story of her first year as she faces her fears and doubts, helps patients deal with the toxic treatments that may save their life, fights the bureaucratic maze of insurance and hospital regulations and runs interference between standoffish doctors and desperate families. She sees patients come in looking healthy and within weeks they are weak, wasted and willing to die because of the side effects of chemotherapy, It is as she says, "a Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil." She learns the hard way that if you want several bags of platelets you must order them separately, the opposite of how you order units of blood. She is present when a patient dies and sees the absurdity when the hospital cannot stop resuscitation until the family says stop but the family wants the staff to tell them when it is time to stop. Brown is the kind of nurse that we would want to care for us or our family. My Advance Reader's Edition About the Author page was blank but I hope that other editions have some information about this compassionate nurse who found exactly where she belongs.
    • 4/5
      Theresa Brown left her job as an English professor to be a nurse in the oncology department of a hospital. This book includes a number of her observations about her first year on the job. At times, this was a tough book to read but it gave me a better understanding of the amount of effort involved in providing care to patients. This book shows that Ms. Brown is a very caring individual and really enjoys her work but that it is tough and emotionally draining. It was interesting to read from a nurse point of view as they are the ones that we take for granted when in the hospital. I would definitely read more from Ms. Brown. The book seemed too short--I was hoping for more of her stories.
    • 2/5
      Unfortunately, I was unimpressed with this book. I really wanted to get a better look at the role nurses play in our society, but this was only a small part of what this memoir entailed. I felt the vast majority of the book was spent recounting the author's own misgivings and hang-ups and her personal trials and tribulations, i.e. her frustration with having to do "paperwork duty" after spraining her knee because if she didn't work she would be fired, or how she transferred floors because of the "meanness" of her coworkers.Granted, I realize the subtitle of the book is "A New Nurse Faces Death, Life, and Everything in Between," so there are bound to be personal anecdotes and shared experiences. However, I was really hoping for a more inside look at how the nursing profession works and, unfortunately, I don't feel I got that with this book.I hate giving negative reviews because I feel that for another person, with a different background, they may really love this memoir. For me, personally, I was unimpressed by Brown's writing style and her recounts of her time spent on the oncology floor. Her experiences were undoubtedly harrowing, especially for a woman who changed careers mid-life, but I don't feel that the ultimate goal of this book, to show others what really goes on behind the scenes, was met.
    • 5/5
      As a nursing student, I loved the raw and true perspective on nursing.
    • 4/5
      I had an extra interest in reading Critical Care, as I underwent cancer treatment in 2008 and thus spent a great deal of time in the oncology ward of the local hospital. I found Theresa Brown's story to be a compelling one, both from the sense of her choosing nursing as a second career and her experiences working with cancer patients. As you might expect from a former university English professor, Brown has a gift for language that made this book very readable despite the difficult subject matter.I've read a few "cancer memoirs" over the past few years, and found the vast majority of them lacking. This was the only book that dealt with the experience of having cancer that I felt I could really relate to, even when Brown was writing about other types of cancer than the one I had. Her thoughtfulness and compassion for her patients also reflects the vast majority of nurses I was lucky enough to have care for me while I was sick. I've since read several of Brown's op-ed columns in the New York Times, and it's always like getting back in touch with an old friend. I'm glad she's still writing about her experiences with patients and the struggle to find a dignified end to life.
    • 4/5
      It was hard for me to get motivated to read Critical Care, because it encompasses one of the hardest things that we have to deal with in life - death. Once I mustered up the courage to face the type of challenges that nurses face everyday, I couldn't put it down. This book is emotionally charged. It is filled with compassion, one of the greatest traits of a nurse, and helped me to learn more about the types of challenges and rewards that nurses face everyday. It tends to have some of the jargon that comes along with hospital and cancer patient care, but it does not take over the story that lies behind what inspired this book - people. I don't ever expect to go into the nursing profession, but this book has given me more knowledge on how to be a better patient. I would encourage anyone to read this book as it covers issues that undoubtedly we will have to face in our lives, whether it be through our own health or that of a loved one. Theresa Brown did a great job of using her voice to share the stories of her experience with patients, while still respecting their privacy and anonymity.
    • 3/5
      Written by a former English professor this book records a year in the life of a nurse in training, spent working on an oncology unit. Wonderfully told-- these essay-like chapters chronicle the trials, difficulties and misunderstandings but also chronicles the joys and rewards.
    • 4/5
      I read this book in one sitting. It was a quick, interesting read about a side of medicine few people see — or honestly think about. Definitely worth the time for anyone who's dealt with nurses and not appreciated the stresses they're under.
    • 3/5
      A really insightful look at the joys and challenges of a nurse's first year on the job. Sometimes surprising in its honesty, this account shows that the nursing profession--like any other--is much more than the romanticized notions that many people harbor.
    • 2/5
      The first couple of chapters were very well written, but the book ultimately failed to hold my interest. Perhaps reading Atul Gawande has set my bar for medical memoirs too high.
    • 5/5
      CRITICAL CARE: A NEW NURSE FACES DEATH, LIFE, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN by Theresa Brown is a short book with a deceptive simplicity. First, two disclosures that color my perceptions: 1) I have been a RN since 1979; earned a master’s degree in nursing in 1996 and am in advanced nursing practice, as a nurse practitioner. 2) I love my profession. With a straightforward clear-eyed realism, Brown explains via personal anecdotes what nurses do, and why we do it. Just as importantly, she talks about fear, death, joy, relationships, anxiety, and being human. Brown was able to convey the complex competing and conflicting demands of hospital floor nursing, as well as touching upon several common ethical and professional issues that bedevil health care. I have no doubt she could have discussed those issues in far more detail – but that would have been beyond the scope or intent of this memoir. Brown did an excellent job of laying out her insecurities and intimidation – universal feelings during the earliest years of a nursing career – and how she found her own voice on behalf of her patients and herself. This memoir is written in an accessible style that those not in health care will have no difficulty understanding – yet her experiences rang so true, honestly, and eloquently that I read it cover-to-cover. I look forward to reading more from Nurse Brown, as she has much to say – and I enjoy how she says it. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. It tells the story of a courageous woman who went from being a professor to working as a nurse. In this book she details her experiences as a new nurse on the oncology unit. The story is touching and will stay with you for a while after you finish reading it. Highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      Quotable and funny; a nice counterpoint to my tendency to mainline Atul Gawande's books. Pretty much all of us have experienced, or will experience, some heavy-duty medicine at some point, so it's nice to have a broader & more systemic view of how hospitals can work. Also it's good fodder for my ongoing thoughts about management and organizational culture; Brown describes a culture, due to the nature of its work, always on the brink of chaos, but even so different personalities and management styles can promote (or destroy) tranquility.
    • 4/5
      This book is about a new nurse's experiences in an oncology ward. Unlike other books about working in hospitals, most of the patients that go through the oncology ward end up dying. After reading this book, I was reminded of how fortunate I am to not have cancer and how I should enjoy life right now. There weren't as many exciting twists and turns in this book as there would be if it were about the ER, but I still felt it was interesting to learn about what goes on in other parts of the hospital.
    • 4/5
      The author, a former English professor turned registered nurse, provides a fascinating account of what it's like to be a first-year medical oncology nurse.Not only does she provide in-depth stories of incidents that occur on a hospital floor, she does so elegantly, tackling even difficult subjects in an even-handed way. Recommended if you want to know what life as a nurse is really like.
    • 4/5
      Before I got a chance to read this book, it was borrowed by a friend who has been a nurse for 25 years. She finished it in two days and promptly handed it to her husband and had him read it because she said it explained what she did far better than she could ever verbalize. It deals with the everyday, the work that nurses do, and yes it deals with death, far too often because of the ward she works in, but it also gives a reason to celebrate life, health and family, and what gifts they are.The book is also well written, literate and concise without losing its impact because of the authors prior career as as an English professor. It doesn't sugarcoat what goes on, and after all the garbage of the "medical" shows on television, it's refreshing in a stark way to know what really goes on. No cute, perky intern or grumpy curmudgeon of a doctor is going to show up with a miracle cure. It deals with death a great deal, but that's the nature of the beast in an oncology ward. I would recommend the book for anyone looking into the career of nursing, or anyone just interested in what goes on in a hospital. It's dirty, hard and rewarding work. I'm also grateful that I got the chance to read this book because it's not one I would have normally purchased, but I would have been the poorer for not having read it.
    • 2/5
      I'm scared of serious disease and shy away from reading about it, so maybe this wasn't the best choice of books. The author, an English professor turned RN, takes us to the front lines of medicine in a hospital oncology ward. Her days are a constant stream of patients, procedures, paperwork, and family members. Nursing is necessary and important work, and any negativity about the book comes from my discomfort with the subject, not the writing.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book! The author, Theresa Brown, is the perfect person to write about nursing. This book is beautifully written and makes us realize how important nurses are. I learned a lot in this book and look forward to more works by Nurse Brown.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It surprised me, pleasantly, in many ways. It let me down only in that it ended too soon.When I first picked up this book, I expected the author to merely parade grisly experiences before me, making me thankful for my civilian life and giving me a new-found awe for those who can handle this most difficult profession. I wasn't really expecting much in the way of wording or decorum. When I read that brown is a former professor who taught at prestigious Tufts University, I assumed she left because she couldn't hack it. Instead, I saw how a natural, easy talent for words created an aura around the narrative, giving the book a shimmer of sophisticated prose. The words rarely got in the way of the story-telling, except in instances of her penchant for overusing certain words (savvy is a major offender). In a way, I think her teaching didn't serve as much a a previous life before she chose nursing as much as a primer to share her story and transcending messages. She knits stories together through time into a storyline more than merely a timeline. She shares her lessons but does not preach. These are the earmarks of genuinely good storytelling. The details she chooses are meaningful, interesting.Just as important as what she tells and how is what she has omitted. I admired her strength while reading about her accident and return to duty, afraid the accident would cost her the dream. I would have been disappointed to see the book turn selfishly to cover the minutae of her recovery, the physical therapy sessions, the grim expressions on her doctors' faces when they tell her of the severity of her accident like a cheap TV movie. I was also glad to see her home life stayed in the background, giving patients and work their rightful amount of spotlight.In my personal life, I seek experiences to write about to relay to others. This book showed me how to do that the proper way to approach this. For that reason, this was a valuable read.
    • 4/5
      This is an unstintingly honest memoir of the author's experience in a nursing career, mostly caring for cancer patients. She deals with both the medical side and the human side of the job, and explains the details of the treatments without drowning the reader in jargon. Her book can be quite graphic at times, particularly in chapter two when a patient's smooth, ordinary-looking back suddenly bursts open Alien-style, and in the chapter "Doctors Don't Do Poop," where she talks about the scatological aspects of nursing.I would recommend this to anyone interested in medicine, particularly someone considering a nursing career. From reading this memoir I know it's definitely not something I could ever do, and I gained a deeper respect for nurses.
    • 3/5
      Much has been written by and about doctors and their role in hospitals and patients' lives but very little has been written about nurses and the vital role they play. Most people in a hospital see far more of their nurses than they do of their doctors and yet so much focuses on the white-coated, stethoscope wearing MD. Brown remedies this with this memoir of her first year in nursing. Theresa Brown left her job as a college English professor to become an oncology nurse. For her, the jump was to do something more professionally meaningful and her decision to focus on oncology meant that her work was often carried out at the end stages of someone else's life.The memoir tells of compelling patients and situations during her first year. She speaks of death and being available to her patients' families should they need her. She speaks of learning the commonplace language of the oncology ward. She invites the reader along as she learns the simple procedures she will have to do day in and day out. And she tackles the politics of hospitals, the difference in tone on wards and floors, the personalities of co-workers, good and bad. Her memoir is both personal and universal.The set-up of the book has the feel of interconnected essays rather than an unbroken narrative but that works with the episodic nature of hospital work and the very different aspects that comprise a job like nursing. This is more a musing on her first year of nursing rather than an expose' of the hard, physical, dirty work that is often left to nurses. Brown mentions these distasteful things in passing but she doesn't go in for a lot of visceral description. Her writing is smooth and easily accessible, as one would expect from a former English professor, and the pages turn quickly. Anyone who has devoured doctors' memoirs will find a different but valuable corollary here in this book. Read it if you like non-fiction medical narratives or you've been touched by the kindness of a nurse or even if you've run across your own personal version of Nurse Ratched. You'll gain a little bit of insight and understanding of all of the above.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book, most of the time. Some chapters were definitely more interesting than others, and I really like the fact that in addition to being entertained, which I require when reading, I also learned alot about the care and treatment of patients with cancer. I had no idea of the intricacies and politics of nursing. The book is definitely well-written (Brown is a former journalist) and easy to read. I'm wondering if perhaps mixing up the chapters might have helped with flow...the chapter about the author's injury just didn't feel relevent so early on in the book (just hadn't invested enough in the characters at that point, I don't think, and the latter half of the book was definitely more appealing. Great debut effort!
    • 4/5
      I received this book as an early reviewer and liked it a lot. I have a medical background, but not much experience in the area of cancer nursing. The stories of a new nurses experience in a stress-filled challenging unit were interesting, moving and a professional look at a side of nursing most lay people don't see. I can see that this book could be helpful to anyone with a relative experiencing a serious illness, as well as physicians who may benefit by developing more respect and understanding of the nursing profession as a whole. Good work!
    • 4/5
      While this book is ostensibly the story of the author's first year as an RN, the plot is very loose and the chapters stand alone. This is a good book to read if you want to get an idea of what nurses and hospital patients experience, especially in oncology. My sister wants to be a nurse and I will pass this on to her. I wished there was more of the gritty details and less English professor-style musing, but I'm biased since I'm in pharmacy school.
    • 4/5
      Having received an advance reader’s edition of this book, I was anxious to read this memoir by a former English professor. Ms. Brown decided to make a mid-life career change and left the comfort of her position at Tufts University to take up the challenge and rigors of nursing school. Upon completion of her training, she chose the specialty of oncology. The book is a very quick read and provides an inside look at how medical care is dispensed in one particular hospital and the internal politics in that hospital. I believe Ms. Brown to be a very dedicated nurse who cares about providing the very best care possible to her patients and also wants to use common sense to do that. Having said that, I thought there were times when she came across as feeling superior to her co-workers in that regard. One other element in this book continued to distract me and caused me to repeatedly ask myself why Ms. Brown found it important to include this information. Here, I am referring to her stating three times that a co-worker or patient was African American. I didn’t understand how that was relevant. Putting aside these minor comments, I am glad I read the book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in an insider’s view of providing care in an oncology ward.
    • 4/5
      After I read this book I felt like Oliver Twist - I wanted "more." More information about Teresa Brown's cancer patients, more about her decision to change careers from teaching college English to become an oncology R.N. and more about the emotional and physical impact of daily life on a cancer unit's nursing team.Brown's stories span the comical to the heart wrenching with a bit of hospital politics thrown in as well as her own experiences as a patient negotiating the emergency department when she hurt her knee. Her writing is crisp, readable and was a great pick by "Reader's Digest Magazine," for the June 2010 book excerpt. If you like medical memoirs, life and death snippets and nurse stories than this is the perfect book for you. If you like details, in depth knowledge about patients, their diseases their feelings, emotions and family situations then this is not your book. If you want to know more about the author's career change, well you won't get many details about that either.Still, you cannot beat the writing and it will leave you wanting more.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting account about one woman's experience as a nurse. However, I would have liked to see more of why she made the decision to leave her teaching job and become a nurse. She tries to explain it, but it doesn't do a choice of that magnitude enough justice. A good read, even if you know nothing about nursing.
    • 3/5
      The entré a nurse gets into someone’s life when he or she is sick is a true honor, and I looked for this in Critical Care, but for me it did not come through. The title did state that this book was written from the perspective of a “new nurse” so it makes sense that the focus would be more on tasks. I appreciated the frank description of how new nurses can be treated by physicians as well as fellow nurses and the chapter entitled “Doctors Don’t Do Poop” made me smile. Healthcare is one of the few fields that can provide such a wealth of material for good story telling, but I just didn’t find that richness here.
    • 3/5
      I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program, and I was not disappointed with it. Brown spares no details in describing the incidents she dealt with in her first year of nursing. I was impressed with the way that Brown described her patients (and their families) with care and compassion, as opposed to other medical memoirs I have read, which did not. The story was easy to read, and the book passed quickly, maybe a little too quickly. I would have liked to see the book be longer. Since I am a teacher, not a medical professional, I passed this book to my sisters (both of whom are RNs) to see if the book was realistic, or perhaps had been "exaggerated" in order to sale more books. My sisters each read the book and said that the book not only was plausible, the stories were similar to incidents that they had also experienced. I was glad to get "expert" confirmation that the book was not too dramatic or far-fetched, and was most likely an accurate memoir.
    • 4/5
      The life experience of an English professor helps this author's experience as a first year nurse be brilliantly described. Her language is expressive of hospital treatment and the vulnerable emotions of patients, families, and professionals. This insightful book is a pleasure to read and a treasure trove of end life understanding.