National Nurses United

Books_FNL with art 8/20/10 4:05 PM Page 21 Onward and Upward improve the attractiveness and self-esteem of their children as it was to correct physical defects that undermine their looks and social function. Sales skyrocketed as doctors were bestowed with financial incentives to prescribe the drug, and as parents sought to give their boys a chance to become what it is to be "male"—tall and strong. The book later documents what happened to some of the children treated with DES or hGH, and details the long-term physical and psychosocial effects of their treatments. It also provides insight into the pharmaceutical industry's ongoing lobby to gain FDA approval to use hormonal treatments to manipulate the height of otherwise healthy children. But, more importantly, by the end of the book, Cohen and Cosgrove have rightly provoked questions about what the future holds as the advancement of medicine generates more scientific breakthroughs and offers greater temptation for us to strive for physical perfection. Will genetic engineering become the DES or hGH of our time? Cohen and Cosgrove provide a historical perspective on the lengths many of us will go to in order to fit in, and rightly label their book "a cautionary tale." —Kelly Green By Denise Danna, RN and Sandra Cordray; Springer Publishing he authors of Nursing in the Storm interviewed dozens of RNs at six New Orleans hospitals to create this compendium of nurses' stories about working through Hurricane Katrina and the massive flooding of the city, one of the worst disasters to hit a metropolitan area in the history of the United States. Many of the RNs interviewed worked in administration, however, so the book is somewhat heavy with their managerial perspectives. As usual, the voice of sanity comes from staff nurses, as in the example of Rae Ann Deroché, an RN at Chalmette Medical Center who questions her nurse supervisor before the storm hits about why the hospital isn't being evacuated. "I am thinking, 'What the hell is wrong with you people?' I am a staff nurse who is asking, why aren't these people out yet? What do you have going on? What are the plans?" But the book still fascinates simply for its raw documentation of the dreadful events and conditions endured by nurses, doctors, and ancillary staff as they struggled to care for critically ill patients without electricity, running water, air conditioning systems, and other resources. Five years after the levees broke, the horror and chaos of Katrina is still fresh in these accounts. Through the stories, readers are transported into the hospitals as nurses heroically work together to evacuate babies from NICUs and vented patients from ICU, try to calm patients, family members, and coworkers, and make do with J U LY | A U G U S T 2 0 1 0 Reflections on Doctors: Nurses' Stories About Physicians and Surgeons Edited by Terry Ratner, RN; Kaplan Publishing Nursing in the Storm: Voices From Hurricane Katrina T the equipment and supplies they've got. Many of the hospitals lost critical resources because their generators, power systems, and food services were located on flooded basement levels. Besides chronicling the nurses' actions, part of the authors' intention in telling these stories is to remind readers of the suffering and death that ensues when we are not prepared for emergencies and disasters. Danna and Cordray include in their "Lessons Learned" chapter an interesting section on the fragility of the nation's levees. From an interview with Sandy Rosenthal, founder of a nonprofit educational website, Levees.org, readers learn that 39 of America's 50 largest cities lie partly on floodplains. Dallas and Sacramento are just two examples. Anyone unconcerned about the next disaster need only read one or two stories from Nursing in the Storm to be quickly scared into action. —Lucia Hwang ou might call this book "doctors through the eyes of nurses." It's a small book, the core of it being only about 132 pages, and is essentially a collection of short pieces featuring nurses' reflections on their relationships with physicians. There are some interesting stories here, and some decent writing. Unfortunately, the book fails to live up to its potential. As I said, there is some good work here: nurses reflecting on lessons learned, both by themselves and physicians, some accurate accounts of the stresses of nursing that any nurse can relate to, and some hints at how the profession has changed over the years, for better and for worse. We hear from nurses who work in academic centers about the process by which young doctors learn to respect nurses in that setting. We hear stories of egomaniacal doctors learning lessons in humility. We see a nurse muster the courage to refuse a doctor's order—and how the doctor learns from it and apologizes. We see a neglectful medical director of a skilled nursing facility replaced with an excellent and caring physician. And we are treated to a number of hagiographic descriptions of outstanding physicians doing selfless work in the difficult circumstances of low-income clinics and wartorn countries. Lots of these stories leave you with a nice Chicken Soup for the Soul sort of feeling. Unfortunately, what this soup lacks is the spice of hard reality. Virtually every story, if conflict exists at all, comes to a happy and heartwarming resolution. Nowhere in this book do we find the nurse who stands up to a bullying doctor, is fired for her trouble, and finds 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 Y N AT I O N A L N U R S E 21

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