Tag Archives: nurse

Daumier’s doctors

May 25, 2022

Howard Fischer Uppsala, Sweden   “Le médecin : Pourquoi, diable! mes malades s’en vont-ils donc tous?”. Caricature by Daumier. National Library of Medicine. No known copyright restrictions. “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” – Reinhold Niebuhr   Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) was a “fundamentally discontented” French social critic, painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He produced over […]

Doris Unland: surgical nurse extraordinaire

January 22, 2021

Frederic Grannis Duarte, California, United States   Doris Unland RN “scrubbed in” OR 10. Doris Unland was an extraordinary American surgical nurse who worked for forty-seven years at St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. She may have participated in more major surgical operations than any other person—physician or nurse—in history. Born on December 19, 1910, […]

“A Veritable Angel of Mercy”: the sardonic representation of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

March 23, 2020

Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta   Group photograph of the first twenty Navy Nurses, appointed in 1908. Naval Photographer. 1908. Wikimedia. Public Domain. Critical acclaim and popular opinion have elevated Kesey’s first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962, to something of a modern classic, much read and written about as well as adapted […]

Letting go of logic

February 18, 2020

Nimisha Bajaj Columbus, Ohio, United States   Last Supper by Leonardo DaVinci. Photo by Paris Orlando. November 2019. Public Domain “He’s here for aspiration pneumonia. He doesn’t want a G-tube even though we tried to explain to him that if he continues to eat and drink by mouth, this will keep happening and he will […]

Grit

January 28, 2020

Romalyn Ante Wolverhampton, England   My mother is right—my brother’s blood is getting dirtier. A nurse like me, she had read the result of his glomerular filtration rate, a test that measures how well the kidneys clean the blood. It had dropped below 15, an indication that his chronic renal failure was reaching its end […]

Preparation for surgery

November 19, 2019

A nurse and a surgeon, both wearing gown and mask. Etching by H.A. Freeth. Copyright M, A and R Freeth. CC BY   This simple drawing of a nurse and surgeon preparing for work captures the tension in the moment just before surgery begins. Though only a small portion of either figure’s face is visible, […]

Those eyes

March 4, 2017

Susan Woldenberg Butler Canberra, Australia   Publication Acknowledgement: This fictional short story was published in Secrets from the Black Bag (Royal College of General Practitioners Publications; London, December, 2005). I’ve always involved myself in the lives of my patients and their families. Familiarity with context helps me to provide better treatment and nourishes such mental […]

Undignified

January 27, 2017

Christopher Schayer New Haven, Connecticut, United States   Reading Devotions to Grandfather, Albert Ankler, 1893, Switzerland-Bern In walks another set of new faces. More white lab coats, asking their questions, poking and prodding at me, lifting my Johnny coat as if I’m a mere object for their scientific minds to investigate. They come and they […]

The “Bangka Island Massacre”: Australian military nurses in the Pacific War

January 22, 2017

Angharad Fletcher London and Hong Kong   Centaur Poster “Civilian nurses, bound on errands of mercy among the worst underworld dens, are never in danger from the most hardened criminals. But Australia’s nurses were not safe from the Japanese. No British citizen forgets the name of Nurse Edith Cavell. Australia now has her own Edith […]