National Nurses United

National Nurse Magazine July-August 2012

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existing infrastructure that works so well to provide healthcare to Americans so desperately in need of proper care. Longman���s proposal is both refreshing and exciting, a no-brainer answer to the current healthcare crisis that had been sorely missing in all the debates leading up to and following the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. ���Framed correctly, this proposal for government provision of healthcare, as opposed to government provision of mere health insurance, should not seem out of step with American tradition,��� argues Longman, pointing to government operation of fire departments, police departments, public schools, and the highway system as examples. ���None of this is considered socialism. How is government-provided health care fundamentally different?��� It���s hard to refute his logic. Even working at a nurses union, which represents a number of VA nurses, I was surprised by much of what I learned about the VA in Best Care Anywhere. This easy-to-read book is well worth your time if you care about deepening your understanding of what is wrong with the American healthcare system and what we can adopt from the VA system to fix it. ���Lucia Hwang Fatal Decision: Edith Cavell WWI Nurse By Terri Arthur; Beagle Books Publishing, 2011 I n this impressive historical novel, Massachusetts RN Terri Arthur dramatizes the true story of Edith Cavell, a British nurse who, during World War I, defied the German occupiers of Brussels to treat and aid wounded British, French, and Belgian soldiers���an act of nursing and of humanity for which she would later be executed by the Germans. Her death prompted a renewed wave of enlistment in Britain and, by many accounts, was also highly influential in pulling the United States into World War I. Some argue that, if not for the worldwide public outrage over her death, World War I might have turned out differently. Today, a statue of Edith Cavell stands in Trafalgar Square, but many people and nurses outside of England are not familiar with her story. Arthur���s thrilling, suspenseful, and very readable book about Cavell fixes that. Before Cavell even gets involved in helping Allied soldiers, however, she was already an important figure in the development of modern nursing. Herself trained at the Royal London Hospital in the late 1890s, Cavell soon began teaching and was recruited by a prominent surgeon to Brussels in 1901 to found the country���s first school of nursing. In Belgium at that time, nursing was still not considered to be a respectable profession. Catholic nuns without medical education or training performed nursing duties, often with very poor patient outcomes. This all changed when Cavell, the surgeon Antoine DePage and his wife, and a group of forward-thinking benefactors started the rigorous ���Clinique��� nursing school. Over the next decade, Cavell would help transform standards of nursing and medical care in Belgium. In August of 1914, World War I broke out in Europe. Though Cavell could have returned to England, she was unwilling to abandon the school, her life���s work, and stayed in Brussels. Later that month, German troops, advancing toward France, marched in and occupied Brussels. Among various edicts, they prohibited anyone from aiding ���enemy��� soldiers. 18 N AT I O N A L N U R S E But Cavell, as a nurse, placed her duty to patients, any patient of any nationality, above all else. She willingly gave the best care possible to German soldiers as well as Allied soldiers. So when two wounded British soldiers soon showed up at her doorstep, she agreed to treat and hide them at her school until they were well enough for a growing underground network of Belgian resistance workers to move them out of the country. In this way, Cavell joined the underground and helped more than a thousand Allied soldiers until the Germans finally arrested her about nine months later. Cavell was quickly imprisoned, court martialed without real representation, sentenced to death by firing squad, and executed on Oct. 12, 1915 despite appeals for clemency by American and Spanish ambassadors. After the war, her remains were returned to and buried near her hometown in England, and she received a state funeral at Westminster Abbey. Arthur does a remarkable job of making Cavell and her world come alive. She says that, for the most part, all of the events that took place actually happened, and she spent two years researching for the book, including two trips to Belgium and four to the United Kingdom. Arthur spent four years writing the book while working evening shifts on a coronary step-down unit. All her hard work paid off. Her characters��� dialogue rings true (even in English, French, and German), she seamlessly weaves in the history and culture from that time, and her writing is fluid and enjoyable to read. My only quibbles are that the book could have been edited more tightly and used a stronger, cleaner cover design, and that her publisher could have hired a better proofreader to eliminate the typographical errors that pepper the book. But these are minor criticisms. Terri Arthur has done an amazing job and anyone, registered nurse or not, will not fail to be moved by Cavell���s story. ���Lucia Hwang First, Do Less Harm: Confronting the Inconvenient Problems of Patient Safety Edited by Ross Koppel and Suzanne Gordon; Cornell University Press, 2012 M W W W. N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G ost casual readers with an interest in healthcare policy will probably not consider the title of Koppel and Gordon���s book, First Do Less Harm: Confronting the Inconvenient Problems of Patient Safety, particularly provocative. It���s a confounding head-scratcher, to be sure. J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 1 2

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