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Intensive Care: The Story of a Nurse | Mass Market Paperback

by Echo Heron (Author)

List Price:

$7.99

Available:

Usually ships in 24 hours

Binding:

Mass Market Paperback

Publisher:

Ivy Books

Page Count:

384 Pages

Publication Date:

May 12, 1988

Sales Rank:

299,960th

FEATURES

ISBN13: 9780804102513
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 22 reviews)

Great Read by Kristen M. Ackerbauer

5 Stars
March 07, 2009
As an ICU/CVICU RN I loved this book... Also passed it along to my mother (not a nurse) who couldn't put it down either.

Stories that have a pulse of their own by Katharos (West Seneca, NY)

5 Stars
June 04, 2008
I am not a nurse, but I found that the fullness of Heron's easy and poignant storytelling brings the reader into her life to share in the joys and frustrations of being a student, nurse, mother, and human being. I came to know the characters as if they were my own friends, coworkers and acquaintances. The reality and detail of the human life portrayed in the pages of this book reminds us of the universal experience of what it is to live. Her experiences are sometimes dramatic, tense, uplifting, sad, frustrating, or funny but always, always spellbinding. It is a true story of how to live, learn and grow. It is simply the best biographical narrative I have encountered.

Terrific book by P. Eaken

5 Stars
October 27, 2007
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.

Glorified by C. Attaud (Rome, GA USA)

4 Stars
January 13, 2007
This is a great book to read and get a bird's eye view to some of the things that nurses deal with. She has great chapters with great scenarios, stories and writing on some of the emotions that are dealt with in the course of a nurse's day. I can't help but think that some of the stories centered around her nursing school days are anything but Glorified and richly enhanced in terms of what she actually said and did, but nonetheless it's a great, easy read.

Great Book About The Realities of Nursing~! by Mychal Mark (Santa Clarita, CA)

5 Stars
November 27, 2006
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!

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Tending Lives: Nurses on the Medical Front by Echo Heron (Author) A critical-care nurse in coronary and emergency medicine for eighteen years, Echo Heron has seen and heard it all. Here she recounts narratives of real-life medical dramas experienced by nurses across the country, sharing with us the inspiring, the tragic, and the outrageously funny: a penitentiary nurse who wasresponsible for orchestrating a murderer's execution; a stroke victim who rose out of his depression when his nurses began telling him jokes; and, perhaps the most riveting testimony,...
	A Nurse's Story by Tilda Shalof (Author) The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was known as “Laura’s Line.” They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also caring and incredibly committed to their jobs. Laura set the tone with her quick remarks. Frances, from Newfoundland, was famous for her improvised recipes. Justine, the union rep, wore t-shirts emblazoned with defiant slogans, like “Nurses Care But It’s Not in the...
	Condition Critical by Echo Heron (Author) "ENTERTAINING...GRITTY, BEHIND-THE-SCENES DETAILS OF HOSPITAL OPERATIONS." --Booklist "In the prologue of this book, Echo Heron, RN, states: Nurses are able to do what they do because they are rich in the gifts of healing, compassion and love. She then goes on to illustrate that statement with 18 chapters of amusing and moving true stories of her career in critical care and in the emergency room." --Chicago Tribune "Heron gives a voice to her fellow nurses (a savvy, wisecracking,...
	Emergency!: True Stories From The Nation's ERs by Mark Brown (Author), Marc Brown (Author) * A suicide attempt by an "explosive" young man... * The "hidden secrets" of a grotesquely obese patient... * A couple whose amorous acrobatics get out of hand... * A child brought back from the dead... Bristling with the raw power of reality, this riveting book recounts true tales of life and death from the emergency rooms of America. Dr. Mark Brown asked over 15,000 fellow ER staffers to share their most unforgettable moments. Now, in their own voices, these real ER personnel...
	The Making of a Nurse by Tilda Shalof (Author) The bestselling author of A Nurse’s Story is back with more insider stories. Tilda Shalof has been a caregiver all her life — at home for her family, at work for strangers — but her skills didn’t come easily. From when she was a child taking care of her sick parents to her current position on an ICU team in one of Canada’s largest hospitals, there have always been daunting challenges and worthy rewards for her work. With her trademark humour, unflinching honesty, and skilled...