Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines [Hardcover]

Suzanne Gordon (Author), Claire Fagin (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 12, 1997

Health care systems often seem hobbled by rules and scrubbed clean of personality. Life Support displays their warmer, messier human side by trailing three outspoken nurses on their rounds. One works with cancer patients, another with homebound elderly, while a third mediates between patients and families, doctors and nurses. Between glimpses of large and small life dramas, author Suzanne Gordon (Prisoners of Men's Dreams) considers prejudice and ignorance about nursing. Does lack of ambition or intelligence bar nurses from medical school? Why is their care denigrated, while doctors are elevated? How will sweeping changes in health care affect them and, ultimately, us? Her responses are provocative and far-ranging.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Health care systems often seem hobbled by rules and scrubbed clean of personality. Life Support displays their warmer, messier human side by trailing three outspoken nurses on their rounds. One works with cancer patients, another with homebound elderly, while a third mediates between patients and families, doctors and nurses. Between glimpses of large and small life dramas, author Suzanne Gordon (Prisoners of Men's Dreams) considers prejudice and ignorance about nursing. Does lack of ambition or intelligence bar nurses from medical school? Why is their care denigrated, while doctors are elevated? How will sweeping changes in health care affect them and, ultimately, us? Her responses are provocative and far-ranging.

From Booklist

Gordon's aptly titled book tells the stories of three nurse practitioners^-advanced practice nurses who nursed patients at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and at the patients' homes. Thanks to a program begun at Beth Israel in the 1970s, bedside nurses are permitted--and encouraged--to increase their education and yet remain bedside nurses; salaries grow step-by-step, so experienced nurses do not have to leave patient care for administrative offices. Stories of many different types of patients add life to Gordon's account of her three subjects' nurse-patient relationships and cogency to these nurses' additional roles as spokespersons for the patients to physicians and administrators. Gordon also examines, in her forceful but levelheaded journalist's style, contemporary nursing as it is affected by managed-care programs and administrative downsizing. Buttressing her points with statistics and arguments garnered from many interviews and the literature, she demonstrates that there has been an appalling downturn in nursing care and misled use of poorly trained assistants by some HMOs and insurance companies. William Beatty

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (March 12, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316321176
• ISBN-13: 978-0316321174
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #292,291 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Physician Recommends Life Support for Peers & Patients, May 4, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines (Hardcover)

This is a very moving and important book, which should be required reading for all medical students and doctors. Ms. Gordon who spent three years following three extra-ordinary nurses learned (and in the book presents) more knowledge and insights about sickness, pain, caring, and the health care system than my medicial residents learn during their three year (internal medicine) residency. Each of the three nurses covers a different part of the health care map (oncology chemotherapy nurse, home health nurse, and inpatient nurse) and illustrates the critical and often invisible role nurses play in health care. What the book does so ably is to highlight these special caring roles, and then place them in the context of what is happening in the U.S. health care system today. Ms. Gordon, an advocate for universal health insurance and consumer accoutablity starkly contrasts the bright light these and thousands of other of the quiet heros in nursing, with the dark side of market driven health care that threatens these values and heroism. If for nothing else, the book is worth reading for a useful and interesting history of the practice of nursing, which is interwoven with the stories of these three nurses. Nurses are the essence of quality and this book is a high quality look at their important and endangered role. (Dr. Gordon Schiff internist who directs the Clinical Quality Research Unit at Cook County Hospital in Chicago.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read for EVERYONE, September 14, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines (Hardcover)

I've been a nurse for several years, and I got the book on recommendation from another nurse friend of mine. I was, and continue to be, amazed at the power of this book. It highlighted in stark words and numbers, problems facing health care today, while at the same time brightening the work with the all too human touch of nurses, patients and doctors. Once you read this book, you will understand why legislation such as The Patient Safety Act came to be, and why it is needed. It describes why nursing is so necessary, why even bathing or feeding a patient are not always within the realm of tasks to be assigned to unlicensed personnel. I urge everyone to read this book, and be touched by Gordon's powerful writing. Diana Katseyeanis, RN

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LIFE SUPPORT is a MUST read for all nurses!, May 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines (Hardcover)

Having been an RN for almost 30 years, there have been many times when my colleages and I have said, "We otta write a book! But then reality sets in as we have realized that noone would BELIEVE what we had to say about the health care system and our roles in particular.Bravo to Suzanne Gordon! She tells it like it is with the insight of someone who has been in the trenches and does not suffer from "tunnel vision!" My practice has been validated and the reading of her words was a shot in the arm!Nurses and those who live with, know and love them NEED to read this book and reread it. Pass it on or better yet buy them for your friends and family keeping your own copy for the future.This is a view of the reality of nursing, who we are and what we do, where we fit into the larger health care picture and what the health care system is trying to do to us."It takes a NURSE to save your life."Marilyn Anne Blythe, RN, CBC Brigham & Women's HospitalBoston, M