Bedside Matters


Book Description

Nursing embodies the seemingly timeless characteristics of feminine healing, caring, and nurturing, yet this archetypally female vocation also boasts a distinctive and complex history. Bedside Matters traces four generations of Canadian nurses to explore changes in who became nurses, what work they performed, and how they organized to defend their occupational interests. Whether in the apprenticeship method of the early twentieth century or in the present day restructuring of hospital work, the position of nurses within the health-care system has been structured by class, gender, and ethnic and racial relations. Located between the doctors and untrained or subsidiary patient-care attendants, nurses have struggled to define the boundaries of their occupation vis à vis other members of the health-care hierarchy, even as tensions between bedside and administrative nurses created divisions within nursing itself. Focusing on the daily labours of 'ordinary nurses', McPherson argues that the persisting sex-typing of nursing as women's work has meant that gender consistently complicated nursing's easy categorization as either professional or proletariat. Combining archival records and oral histories, the author shows how nurses, in their work, activities, and social and sexual attitudes, sought recognition as skilled workers in the health-care system. Previously published by Oxford University Press




Bedside Matters


Book Description

This unique book draws upon a collection of essays and personal reflections by Dr Peter Tate, covering at least half a century of his experience of trying to understand, define and improve communication between doctors and patients. Adopting a light, conversational and often humorous tone, the book covers a broad range of situations encountered during the lead author’s career as a general practitioner, his seminal research into understanding doctor-patient communication, and his subsequent role in both teaching and developing the internationally-recognised Royal College of General Practice’s membership video examination. This book demonstrates that clinical experiences, both professional and personal, are fundamental to our perception of what is important and what matters most in medicine. Key features: Unique and personal account of the development of this vital but often overlooked aspect of medicine Engaging and light-hearted, yet academically rigorous Draws on experiences gathered during clinical practice, research and teaching From the authors of the popular The Doctor’s Communication Handbook, now in its eighth edition In reading Bedside Matters doctors, and particularly general practitioners, will not only learn from the author’s experiences, but will be encouraged to reflect on their own clinical and personal experiences, and to use these to better understand and improve their own communication techniques. The author: Peter Tate is a retired General Practitioner, UK With editorial contributions from: Francesca Frame, a General Practitioner based in Cambridgeshire, UK




Bedside Matters


Book Description

Nursing embodies the seemingly timeless characteristics of feminine healing, caring, and nurturing, yet this archetypally female vocation also boasts a distinctive and complex history. Bedside Matters traces four generations of Canadian nurses to explore changes in who became nurses, what work they performed, and how they organized to defend their occupational interests. Whether in the apprenticeship method of the early twentieth century or in the present day restructuring of hospital work, the position of nurses within the health-care system has been structured by class, gender, and ethnic and racial relations. Located between the doctors and untrained or subsidiary patient-care attendants, nurses have struggled to define the boundaries of their occupation vis à vis other members of the health-care hierarchy, even as tensions between bedside and administrative nurses created divisions within nursing itself. Focusing on the daily labours of 'ordinary nurses', McPherson argues that the persisting sex-typing of nursing as women's work has meant that gender consistently complicated nursing's easy categorization as either professional or proletariat. Combining archival records and oral histories, the author shows how nurses, in their work, activities, and social and sexual attitudes, sought recognition as skilled workers in the health-care system. Previously published by Oxford University Press




Bedside Matters


Book Description




Bedside Matters


Book Description

"Walter had mastered the business world at an unaccounted cost to discover in old age and ill-health a degenerative disease that would eventually render his body useless. His mind, however, was trapped as it was, and had an unconventional final act to play to everyone's surprise, including his own. "You're just dying, Walter, Irma, his caretaker said. We all do." "I'm fine with dying, Irma. I'd just like to know when," he replied. But it wasn't true. Walter is a complicated man, captured in the gilded cage of his mansion, tasteful as it is, watching the world, his world, go by without him. As he yearns for his physical power to somehow be magically restored, Walter learns to let go, and let his mind take its course. Visitors with agendas appear to remind him of his life and responsibilities: Walter's ex-wife Polly, a voluptuous handful as he would describe her, Paula, his chip-off-the-old block upright and forthright all-business daughter, Gavin, his immensely attractive and irresponsible son with a very dodgy track record, and the irrepressible daydreams and memories that flood his consciousness with emotions long shunned. While Walter reads the work of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi, his inner life takes on a new shape, as his body continues to betray him and deteriorate. He says a long, reluctant goodbye while engaging a side to life that has been, until now, unexplored. The natural world in the garden outside his window provides pleasure as he battles pain and new people enter his world to invigorate his last days, including his new physical therapist, Tressie, a woman so enticing and exotic he counts the minutes between visits. Walter, for the first time, seems to be experiencing life as a poet would, even as the inevitable end comes closer. He takes a young artist under his wing, and even dabbles with watercolors, something he would never have done as a boy, let alone an elder. Succession becomes an obsession with Paula as she builds her empire, albeit with Walter's help and his power of attorney, and Gavin tries to demonstrate how far he's come after another stint in rehab. Walter watches them play the game of life, as he becomes a mere observer from the solitude of his stately manor, lost, and possibly found, in his thoughts. Walter's world becomes a fascinating realm where philosophy rules. A cinematic non-linear take and frank examination of the promise of life, even at its end, Bedside Matters concerns us all at one time or another and asks the ultimate question: what matters most?"--




Strangers at the Bedside


Book Description

David Rothman gives us a brilliant, finely etched study of medical practice today. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the practice of medicine in the United States underwent a most remarkable--and thoroughly controversial--transformation. The discretion that the profession once enjoyed has been increasingly circumscribed, and now an almost bewildering number of parties and procedures participate in medical decision making. Well into the post-World War II period, decisions at the bedside were the almost exclusive concern of the individual physician, even when they raised fundamental ethical and social issues. It was mainly doctors who wrote and read about the morality of withholding a course of antibiotics and letting pneumonia serve as the old man's best friend, of considering a newborn with grave birth defects a "stillbirth" thus sparing the parents the agony of choice and the burden of care, of experimenting on the institutionalized the retarded to learn more about hepatitis, or of giving one patient and not another access to the iron lung when the machine was in short supply. Moreover, it was usually the individual physician who decided these matters without formal discussions with patients, their families, or even with colleagues, and certainly without drawing the attention of journalists, judges, or professional philosophers. The impact of the invasion of outsiders into medical decision-making, most generally framed, was to make the invisible visible. Outsiders to medicine--that is, lawyers, judges, legislators, and academics--have penetrated its every nook and cranny, in the process giving medicine exceptional prominence on the public agenda and making it the subject of popular discourse. The glare of the spotlight transformed medical decision making, shaping not merely the external conditions under which medicine would be practiced (something that the state, through the regulation of licensure, had always done), but the very substance of medical pract




On All Frontiers


Book Description

Nursing has a long and varied history in Canada. Since the founding of the first hospital by the Augustine nuns in 1637, nurses have contributed greatly to Canadians' quality of life. On All Frontiers is a comprehensive history of Canadian nursing. Editors Christina Bates, Dianne Dodd, and Nicole Rousseau have brought together a vast body of research into one volume. Authored by leading experts, the chapters and vignettes form an overview of the history of Canadian nursing to date. From the midwives of early Canada to urban public health nurses, from remote outposts to the battlefields of Europe, On All Frontiers documents the hardships, challenges, and achievements of Canadian nurses. Richly illustrated with archival photographs, it will prove essential to scholars of Canadian health care history.




For Patients of Moderate Means


Book Description

Between 1890 and 1910 scientific and technological innovation transformed the custodial Victorian charity hospital for the sick poor into the primary source of effective acute medical care for all members of society. For the next half century hospitals coped with relentlessly escalating demands for accessibility by both medical indigents and a new clientele of patients able and willing to pay for hospitalization. With limited statutory revenues and unpredictable voluntary support, hospitals taxed paying patients through ever-increasing user fees, offering in return privacy, comfort, service, and medical attendance in private and semi-private wards that were more appealing to middle-class patients than the stark and grudging service of the public wards.




An Officer and a Lady


Book Description

During the Second World War, more than 4,000 civilian nurses enlisted as Nursing Sisters, a specially created all-female officers' rank of the Canadian Armed Forces. They served in all three armed force branches and all the major theatres of war, yet nursing as a form of war work has long been under-explored. An Officer and a Lady fills that gap. Cynthia Toman analyzes how gender, war, and medical technology intersected to create a legitimate role for women in the masculine environment of the military and explores the incongruous expectations placed on military nurses as "officers and ladies."




Faculty of Nursing on the Move


Book Description

This book provides a historical analysis of the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary in contrast and comparison to the broader evolution of academic nursing in Canada. It addresses how the faculty has responded to important social trends and changes in health care policy and helps the reader to understand contemporary nursing issues. Starting with the dramatic changes in health care policy after the Second World War, it establishes the role of nursing education as pivotal to a growing health care industry. The book then moves on to describe the challenge of developing an identity for an academic unit within the larger academic and health care structure. This book will be of particular interest to anyone involved in women's studies as it represents a case study for broader women's issues within an academic environment.