Customer Reviews

Intensive Care: The Story of a Nurse

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is funny, sad, frightening, and at times unbelievable. As a nurse (and I also read it the first time while in nursing school) I know that every story in this book is absolutely true. I think anyone wanting an inside look into hospitals will find this enjoyable and informative. It proves that in medicine, truth is much stranger--and far more interesting--than fiction. Of the many authors whose books I have enjoyed, Echo Heron is the one I would most like to meet. From the intimate look she gives us into her life, it is easy to tell that this is a bright, funny, and incredibly caring woman.

This book is true life. I have been a nurse for many years and have seen so many of the same things. It touched my heart and warmed my soul. Reminded me of myself and why I became a nurse! A must read for all nurses new and seasoned!!

I read this book while in nursing school, and I just loved it. I am out of school now, and I see the things that Echo describes in her book on a daily basis. Just great! I recommend it to everyone, not just nurses!

A friend of mine had told me about Echo Heron, so I decided to pick up 'Intensive Care'. Am I glad I did! As a pre-nursing student, I love to soak up anything about Nursing and Healthcare in general so I excited about this book. This book exceeded my expecations by far. The earthiness and Echo's witty and sharp humor make this book a very satisfying book to read. I even had a family member read this book and they loved it just I like did. It doesn't matter if you are involved in healthcare or not, you will be touched immensely by this publication.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in entering a medical profession. This book will give the reader an intimate view into the reality of working in a hospital where life and death decisions are made. I'm in nursing school, and reading this book has affirmed my decision to become a nurse.

Her style is a bit melodramatic, and she does tend to romanticize certain events. Such as the boy who comes in to say good-bye to his grandfather--she describes how much he looked up to him, etc, when in reality she knows nothing of their relationship, or even what the man was like in life. But it's easy to overlook these (if you want!), because the meat of the book is about what it's like to take care of people in crisis. I look forward to reading more of her books.

This book is excellent. I happened across it in Barnes & Noble and decided to get it along with Critical Care Nurse. It brought back such fresh memories of nursing school. The stories in here to some may sound made up, but believe me it is the real world. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard while reading a book and I couldn't put it down until the end. You just don't understand it unless you're a nurse but all will enjoy the laughter and heartache of hospital work. The only thing I didn't like was the strong language. She could have toned it down a bit. Otherwise, a must read for all nurses. I look forward to reading the rest of her work.

This is an extrememy well written fast paced book-I have loaned it to 2 friends and they too couldn't put it down. Whether you usually like real life medical stories or not you'll love this one! Be sure to get her sequel book-CCU Nurse--she is a great writer !

I first read this book in 1995 when I was starting to toy with the idea of leaving a paralegal career and pursuing a career in nursing. I found her descriptions and experiences to be very accurate, and her ability to tell a story very entertaining. Nursing is truly a career that comes from the heart, because nobody would do it only for the money! It has remained one of favorite books and I give it to those I know even considering pursuing a career in the nursing field. All her books are excellent, but I think this one is the best!

What can I say....I laughed, I cried, I read from cover to cover. I first read Echo Heron while a first year nursing student. But I became a nurse anyway.

This book, along with her other non-novels should be required reading for all aspiring nurses. If you still want to be one afterwards you really need therapy. All "non nurses" should read her books just to see what we have to put up with and why we turn out the way we do!

A Nurse's Story: A Review of Echo Heron's Intensive Care
Imagine a student nurse's first day being assigned to the emergency room of a big city hospital. She can't decide if her nervousness or her impulsive enthusiasm is to blame for the beads of sweat forming on her forehead as her jittery legs take her down the hallway. She stands before the big double doors and decides she is ready to enter the world of on the spot medicine.
As she walks through the doorway to the emergency room she stops abruptly and allows a small gasp to escape from her lips. The turmoil and noise is overwhelming. Her eyes scan the room as she tries to comprehend what she has gotten herself into. Every available bed is occupied. A young woman covered in blood is in one bed moaning a rhythmic beat, a wailing child is in the next bed, and an old man yelling for a nurse is in the next. A tiny woman is muttering to herself as she mops us vomit from the tiled floor. The student nurse closes her eyes as she considers turning around and sprinting out of the building. Something deep inside tells her that she and her new career will have a love-hate relationship.
In her autobiography, Intensive Care, (Atheneum, 1987, 370 pgs.), Echo Heron relates the story of her nursing career from her early training in the mid 1970's to the burnout she suffered toward the end of her work twenty years later. Heron compels the reader to wonder why anyone would be drawn to this occupation and why anyone, even the most caring, would want to leave it.

The author's narrative reveals how she had the desire to make people's lives better from the age of eight but didn't pursue her dream until she spent many years working as a legal secretary. Heron was a divorced single mother of three and one-half year old Simon when she decided to follow her dream and apply to nursing school. She wasn't alone in her journey, her best friend Jane had applied at the same time. Together they were ready to save the world in their white stockings, crisp white uniforms, and the obligatory nurse's cap pinned to their hair. Heron quickly discovers the nursing program is extremely demanding. Intense studying into the night and long days striving to get through clinicals leaves her exhausted, skeptical, and reminiscing about the benign and boring days she spent as a legal secretary. Heron's resolve and determination prevails though even after fainting the first time she tries to inject a patient.
Faced with some of the ugliest of humanity and the pain people inflict on one another, the emergency room must be one of the most troublesome areas in a hospital for a nurse to work.
Though difficult, Heron learns to love the work in the emergency room. She thrives on the adrenaline rush created by the often chaotic atmosphere. The compassionate act of healing another human being among the onslaught of many patients at one time is what she has been training for. As Heron relates early in the book, "The familiar subtle thrill began to well up inside me as I walked to the nurse's station. Even though I had memorized my lines for the scene, no one ever really knew what was going to happen" (4). In one instance, Heron is assigned to work in the emergency room while she is still in training. Early one morning a man brought his wife to the hospital with burns covering 75% of her body. The couple had been drinking heavily the night before and the wife had passed out while smoking a cigarette. The husband wouldn't let her call paramedics for fear of disturbing the neighbors so they waited three hours for him to sober up. He dropped her off at the emergency room doors and headed to the bar. Compassion is not easily shown when confronted with human beings harming one another.
Children are frequently the most rewarding, frustrating, and heartbreaking of all patients to care for. Heron describes many stories of working on children especially in the emergency room. Most of the stories have happy endings but some endings are particularly sorrowful. Heron relates the story of one such unhappy ending in chapter six of Intensive Care (52). An exhausted looking mother brought her young toddler into the emergency room. The child is unresponsive as the medical team rushes him into a trauma room while the harried mother is escorted to a quiet waiting room. It was discovered while interviewing the mother that her son had wandered into the family's backyard pool while she was napping on the couch in the family room. Heron, still a student nurse, was given the task of informing the child's mother that despite the doctor's best efforts, her son was dead. As Heron struggles to come up with the right words to say, she realizes nothing about this is right. Tears fill her eyes as she thinks of her own son, who is safe at home, and the mothering instinct blends with her nurse's training as she finds the words to speak to the grief stricken mother who just lost her only child. As Heron explains, "Nothing I thought of saying would come close to touching the woman's anguish. In the end I said nothing at all and rocked her in my arms" (88). No amount of training prepares nurses for this moment. It's just another time where their heart leads them to do the right thing.
The population of intensive care units is often terminally ill patients. Instead of healing the sick and releasing them, nurses are frequently conflicted by tending the sick while they face their final days of life. Heron accepts a position in the intensive care unit when she graduates from nursing school. She is passionate about her work in this department although she finds it difficult to come to grips with the mortality rate of the patients she cares for. The recollection of
these people and the continuing fight to sustain life in these patients bleeds into her personal life and memory banks on a daily basis. Heron describes the scene as one of her favorite patients, Turk, is dying. "Joe bent over from the waist, placed the paddles on Turk's chest, and jolted him with four hundred-watt seconds of electricity. It was one of those certain sounds that stayed with me, never to be lost from recall" (235). Inevitably, Heron takes her work home with her which slowly becomes a contributing factor of the burnout she suffers.
Death is a natural part of life. Quite often, especially working in the intensive care unit, part of the author's duties was to increase the level of pain medication given to a terminally ill patient. Knowing that by increasing these levels nurses are essentially speeding up the progression of death goes totally against the oath a nurse takes to save and preserve lives. Heron often struggles with this during her career as saving lives is what her goal has been from a young age. Freeing people from pain for which there is no other release is another part of nursing.
Echo Heron was born in Troy, New York. She moved to San Francisco in 1967 and worked as a legal secretary for eight years. Heron went back to college to become a registered nurse in 1975 and worked for the next 20 years as a nurse in emergency rooms and intensive care units in hospitals along the west coast. In 1983 she submitted a story that was printed in the Reader's Digest and from that was contacted by a publishing house to write an autobiographical
account of her life as a critical care nurse. Intensive Care quickly rose to the New York Times bestseller list where it stayed at number one for two months. Heron has written an additional
seven books, both fiction and nonfiction, all dealing with the medical field. She is currently an activist for patient and nurse's rights and a public speaker while working on additional books.
In their review The New York Daily News reports, "Echo Heron is a very special nurse dedicated to healing and helping in the harshest environments. Intensive Care is unique, penetrating, and unforgettable. Her story is real." Heron does a wonderful job in taking her audience through a passionate and often painful look at nursing. Nursing has many times been characterized as an overworked, underappreciated choice of occupations but it has never been described as being glamorous.
Intensive Care is recommended to anyone interested in employment in the healthcare industry. The author shares her frustrations as well as triumphs as she puts into perspective the real inner workings of a hospital and the naivety of prospective student nurses entering the medical field. Little things like shaving an elderly man, foot rubs, wiping brows, and talking to unconscious people are important to the patient as well as the nurse. Heron's writing requires the reader to contemplate the decision to make nursing a career as she soundly illustrates both the challenges and rewards of nursing.