LIFE OF A NURSE

Marlett presents a diary of the first 10 years of a difficult but sometimes-satisfying nursing career.

The author joined the medical profession in her late 30s after going through a divorce. She began keeping sporadic, anonymous records of her patients in 2000, during her first hospital job. She sometimes recounts her own and her family members’ experiences with medical care but mostly focuses on her career. Marlett worked multiple jobs from the beginning, even after she obtained a full-time nursing position. She provided care for a short time in a “sub-acute” unit for patients recovering from serious medical issues. There, she experienced her first patient death. For seven years she shifted between taking care of patients with cancer and closely monitoring patients in a telemetry unit while also working part time at a rehabilitation hospital. She writes that she mostly enjoyed her work and gained valuable skills, including certification in chemotherapy administration. However, she also makes clear that she and her colleagues faced great challenges, including chronic staff shortages. Marlett tells of conflicts she had with doctors, managers, aides, and other nurses and how her work resulted in injuries to her shoulder, back, and hips. In 2008, she resigned as a full-time hospital nurse and worked briefly at a psychiatric facility before settling into a job in long-term acute care. Over the course of this memoir, Marlett presents a sobering account that will make readers wonder why so many people treat nurses so poorly; it’s clear that this had an effect on the author, who, in her final entry from 2010, writes that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to remain a nurse, “but I really like helping people, and every time I go to work, I have the chance to do that.” The majority of the book, however, is about specific patients and their treatment, and it’s material that many readers may find more difficult to process. Most of her descriptions of medical conditions are expressed in a matter-of-fact manner, but they are not for hypochondriacs or the squeamish.

An unfiltered journal of harrowing hospital work.