Nightingale Tales

Stories from My Life as a Nurse

Lynn Dow

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781631522772
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

In the 1950s, nurses served as handmaidens to the physician; by the start of the new millennium, they had become admired independent practitioners. Nightingale Tales is a peek into that transition, as told by a nurse who lived it. Each chapter is a stand-alone story depicting the ridiculous mores nurses have been subjected to over the years, the archaic equipment they’ve had to struggle with, and the changes in the profession, brought about by time, the feminist movement, and advances in technology. Told with humor and compassion, the stories of Nightingale Tales provides an unusual—and highly entertaining—window into the world of medicine from the mid-twentieth century to the present.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1956
• The Making of a Nurse
• Filigree Wastepaper Baskets
• The Khaki Clique
• Pall Mall Reds
• Eggy
• Beds and Biceps
• Can You Hear Me Now?
• Psych Nurse? Not Me
• Ask Amy
• The Intern
• Quasi-Pharmacists
• The Handmaidens
• The Flying Squad
• Tubes and Tourniquets
• The Special Nursing Unit
• Playing Dress Up
• Cracking the Chest
• Are My Seams Straight?
• San Francisco, Here I Come
• The Gold Coast
• Mount Zion
• The Morgue
• Mistakes
• The Medicare Caper
• The Autocratic Bitch
• Tricks of the Trade
• Professional Boundaries
• Cardiacs and Cataracts
• Black Leather Jackets
• Men
• A Pm of Bms
• Jergy
• Singing Bowls
• Jim Beam to the Rescue
• Champagne Bubbles
• Jimmy Hoffa, MD
• San Quentin
• Fifteen Minutes of Fame
• Best Friends Forever
• Reflections
• Epilogue: 2014
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author