The tradition of physicians as writers and poets is a very long one, and revered, as it ought well be. From Avicenna to Michael Crichton, physicians have often made their mark in history, memoir, poetry, writing about the human condition.
I "grew up" in healthcare reading Lewis Thomas and Samuel Shem, Richard Selzer, Oliver Sachs, William Carlos Williams...writers who took my personal experiences in critical care and made sense of them in terms of philosophy and history; they taught me about neurology,surgery, biology, and poetry and compassion.
I've watched, and loved television...from St Elsewhere to Private Practice that has depicted deeply moving human experiences, but has almost universally focussed on doctors as the prime movers, indeed only practitioners of healthcare. The very few television/movie renditions of nurses are formulaic and stereotyped.
What has always felt lacking to me is the dearth of really good, highly intellectual writing about being a nurse.
I don't believe for a minute that this has anything to do with lack of intellectual capacity or understanding of universal meaning, nor do I think that being a nurse, in a primarily female profession, means that we don't think about the big picture. I've been gifted with working with extraordinarily talented, intelligent and thoughtful practitioners...people who have deliberately chosen the hands on profession of nursing rather medicine. I know I'm not the only person who deliberately chose nursing above medical school, and it certainly wasn't because I was and am not intellectually capable.
It's curious to me that having made that choice, we also choose not to write about our experiences, even though they are as important, as universal, arguably more proximate to actual death and dying, suffering and healing. I don't like to admit it, but I think it's because we nurses have for so long been predominantly women, and more, we've been inured to the subordinate.
I'd like to change this dynamic, to write about my experiences with my peers, my patients, and the things I've learned as a human being interacting with other human beings in the most extraordinary times of their lives and deaths.
