In this collection of first-person narratives, we meet RNs working at the bedside, providing home care, managing hospital departments, teaching and doing research, lobbying for quality patient care, and campaigning for health care reform.

IntroductionPart 1: Set Up to Lose, but Playing to Win A Covert Operation - Kathleen Bartholomew Saving Patients from Dr. Death - Toni Hoffman A Lesson for the Principal - Kathy Hubka The Delicate Discharge - Ruth Johnson No Patience for Poison - Brenda Carle Mr. CEO, Will You Marry Me? - Candice Owley Intolerable Behavior - Eleanor Geldard One Is One Too Many - Thomas Smith A Comfortable Cover Up - Jenny Kendall Stacking the Cards in Our Favor - Ro LicataPart 2: We Don't Have to Eat Our Young Mentor Unto Others...- Clola Robinson-Blake A Dose of Diplomacy - Donna Schroeder Standing Up for What You Don't Know - Judy Schaefer Broken Bones and Ice Cream - Edie Brous Treating Transition Shock - Judy Boychuk Duchscher The Empty-Hands Round - Amaia Sáenz de OrmijanaPart 3: Excuse Me, Doctor, You're Wrong Eye/I Advocacy - Jane Black As If the Patient Can Hear You - Clarke Doty Don’t Just Add Nurses and Stir - Janet Rankin Gloves Off - Nancy Marie Valentine The Overlooked Symptom - Jo Stecher Hope in the Midst of Tragedy - Connie Barden The Advantages of Age - Marion Phipps An Expiration Date for Indignancy - Madeline Spiers What Hospice Is For - Jean Chaisson A Real Pain - Paola ScamperlePart 4: Not Part of the Job Description I'll Call in Sick If I Have To - Barbara Egger Doing the Heavy Lifting - Martha Baker Attacked by a Patient, Abandoned by My Hospital - Charlene L. Richardson The Samurai Sword - Anne Duffy Only When It's Safe - Bernie Gerard The Red Shirts Are Coming - Mary Crabtree Tonges Not Saints or Sisters - Belinda MoriesonPart 5 When One Advocate Can Make a Difference Putting Lymphedema on the Map - Saskia R. J. Thiadens An Inconvenient Nurse - Faith Henson A Safe Delivery from Domestic Abuse - Kristin Stevens To Do the Unthinkable - Barry L. Adams The Only Nurse for Miles Around - Dagbjört Bjarnadóttir More Than Boo-boos and Band-Aids - Judy Stewart First Responders in the AIDS Epidemic - Richard S. FerriPart 6: Choking on Sugar and Spice: Challenging Nurses' Public Image Silenced during the SARS Epidemic - Doris Grinspun In the Halls of Academe - Claire M. Fagin R-E-S-P-E-C-T - Lisa Fitzpatrick Real Nurses Don't Wear Wings - Victoria L. Rich The Lady with a Loud Voice - Jeanne Byner Taking on the Terminator - Vicki Bermudez Defending the Nursing Profession over Dinner - Elizabeth Kozub Remaking the Power Nurse - Pierre-Andre Wagner Health Policy from Nurses' Point of View - Yuko Kanamori Maybe We Should Be Bragging - Guðrún Aðalsteinsdóttir Finessing the Chairman of the Board - Carol Blount Called to Duty at 30,000 Feet - Ann ConversoPart 7: Applied Research Nurse PI on a Clinical Trial - Kathleen Dracup The Need for Nurse Evaluators - Teresa Moreno-Casbas Research and Nursing-Home Reform - Charlene Harrington How Nurses Make It Work - Kathryn Lothschuetz Montgomery Teamwork through Research - Lena Sharp Keep Asking Questions - Sean Clarke No More Martyrs - fane Lipscomb Taking On Conventional Wisdom - Thóra B. HafsteinsdóttirPart 8: Sticking Together Winning Recognition of Nursing Expertise - Edie Brous A Union Just for Nurses - Massimo Ribetto We Rained on Their Parade - Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez Protesting on the Red Carpet - Kelly DiGiacomo Saving the Carney - Penny ConnollyPart 9: Still Fighting The Male Midwife - Gregg Trueman Fighting for Our Vets - Edmond O'Leary We Are the Experts - Karen Higgins A Collective Voice - Diane Sosne We Will Not Be Silenced - Carol Youngson Standing By One Patient - Faith Simon

These stories show how nurses have stepped up their care to include advocating for patients and offering solutions to some of these problems while continuing to perform their duties with expertise and compassion. Increasingly, nurses are self-advocates who participate actively in determining the parameters of good patient care.... Each chapter is complete unto itself and a good read; taken as a whole, the chapters clearly suggest that nurses are defining and implementing important new roles for themselves in the modern health care delivery system—a development that bodes well for patients, the system, and nurses.

The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work explores the historical, social, political, and economic forces that shape health care work and organizations. Focusing on the work of professional and nonprofessional staff as well as family caregivers, the series illuminates how the culture of health care work affects the structuring of health policy and practice. In an increasingly global marketplace, the series also seeks to better understand the international context within which all health systems function. Looking at health policy and the health professions from a variety of perspectives, including first-person accounts, the series is aimed at a wide audience including those who work in health care, academics, policy makers, and professional organizations, as well as general readers. Proposals and inquiries about the series should be sent to Suzanne Gordon (lsupport@comcast.net) or Sioban Nelson (dean.nursing@utoronto.ca) Series Editors Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist whose work focuses on the health care work force, political culture, and women's issues. She is author of Life Support:Three Nurses on the Front Lines and Nursing against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care, coauthor of Safety in Numbers:Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care and From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public, editor of When Chicken Soup Isn't Enough: Stories of Nurses Standing Up for Themselves, Their Patients, and Their Profession, and coeditor (with Sioban Nelson) of The Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered. Sioban Nelson is Dean and Professor at the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto. Her books include, as coeditor, The Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered and Notes on Nightingale: The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon.