The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives

The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown, 256 pages.
The author has a PhD in English and taught at Tufts before deciding to become a nurse. In this book she recounts one twelve-hour day working on a cancer ward in a Pennsylvania hospital. She tells how even on what looks like a "light" day, she has three patients while the other nurses have four each, the workload can be all-consuming. With having to "chart everything," two new admissions during the course of the day, a huge mistake by the admitting staff found in one patient, dangerous chemotherapy to be given to another this average shift is fraught with complications, and ptentially life-threatening situations.
Brown does a wonderful job showing the complexity of the lives of her patients and her coworkers.
Balanced, hopeful, and engaging; the author's PhD in English and love of literature makes the account a good read.