"Doctors heal, or try to, but as nurses we step into the breach, figure out what needs to be done for any
given patient today, on this shift, and then, with love and exasperation, do it as best as we can."�from Critical
Care
"At my job, people die," writes Theresa Brown, capturing both the burden and the singular importance
of her profession. Brown, a former English professor at Tufts University, chronicles here her first year as an
R.N. in medical oncology. As she does so, Brown illuminates the unique role of nurses in health care, giving us
a deeply moving portrait of the day-to-day work nurses do: caring for the person who is ill, not just the illness
itself.
Critical Care takes us with Brown as she struggles to tend to her patients' needs, both physical (the rigors of
chemotherapy) and emotional (their late-night fears). Along the way, we see the work nurses do to fight for their
patients' dignity, in spite of punishing treatments and an often uncaring hospital bureaucracy. We also see how
a twelve-hour day of caring for the seriously ill gives Brown herself a deeper appreciation of what it means to
be alive. Ultimately, this is a book about embracing life, whether in times of sickness or health.
As she takes us into the place where patients and nurses meet, Brown shows us the power of human connection in
the face of mortality. She does so with a keen sense of humor and remarkable powers of observation, making Critical
Care a powerful contribution to the literature of medicine.