R.N.: The Commitment, the Heartache, and the Courage of Three Dedicated Nurses

Writing of an anonymous teaching hospital in Boston, here called Memorial, Carpineto, a former social worker at the institution, follows three pseudonymous nurses on their rounds: Jessie Concannon, an unmarried 34-year-old nurse-manager in the surgical oncology unit; 24-year-old oncology-hematology staff nurse Dominique Raza, also single; and Gina Rossi, a 41-year-old grandmother and critical nurse specialist who teaches in the surgical intensive care unit when she is not lecturing around the country and filling other PR functions for Memorial. Although Carpineto, too, serves as publicist for the nursing profession in this book, she nevertheless provides an instructive appreciation of the difficulties and satisfactions of the field. Memorial has adopted the corporate model and functions like a business firm, shows Carpineto, giving nurses less time to perform the caregiving which attracted them to the profession, with frequent management meetings, record-keeping and fiscal accountability the priorities. Of the three practitioners we observe, Concannon has left nursing to study psychotherapy, Raza waffles about continuing and only Rossi, the hospital's celebrity nurse, is content. Their situations, suggests Carpineto may be emblematic of the profession. as a whole. (Feb.)