Author Description

Crisis in an award-winning journalist delivers a dramatic account ofthe challenges and opportunities of nursing today.No one goes through life untouched by nurses. They are there to cradle usat birth, care for us when we are sick or injured and offer comfort atdeath. Yet nursing has not only been an invisible profession, but a silentone. Only recently have we begun to hear from Canada's nurses, as theyreact to cutbacks, job losses, overwork, and lack of respect for theirskills. These grievances have resulted in unprecedented shortages and alife-threatening crisis.In Critical Care award-winning journalist Andre Picard brings us to thefront lines of the nursing crisis, providing a remarkable portrait of thestate of the profession through the eyes of nurses themselves. Heinterviewed more than 40 nurses and what he discovered is, in some cases,shocking, in others, heartbreaking. Yet the stories reaffirm our image ofnurses as caring, knowledgeable and dedicated - invaluable members ofCanada's public health system.Take Kim Widger, a pediatric oncology nurse who every day has to answerquestions "What does it feel like to die?" Or Karen Johnson, a traumanurse and educator, as she describes the rigors of the "trauma season," theperiod between May 24 and Thanksgiving, when there is a lethal mixture ofmany more cars on the road and increased alcohol consumption by young men.Or Penny Triggs, a medical evacuation nurse working for a private airambulance service in Nunavut. or Cathy Crowe, a nurse-practitioner whosework with the homeless has transformed her into a political activist.Woven throughout Critical Care is Andre Picard's insightful commentary onthe challenges of contemporary nursing, plus a passionate and thoughtfulprescription for change. This is a book not just of interest to those inthe health field, but to anyone who cares about the future of health care.About TheAndre Picard is The Globe and Mail's public health reporter. He is theauthor of the acclaimed The Gift o