When it comes to the nursing profession, who better to talk about it than actual nurses? There are quite a few informative, inspiring, and entertaining non-fiction books by experienced nurses for you to choose from, so we narrowed down the list to our favorite five.
I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse
This collection of essays and stories by both veteran and new nurses will have you laughing, crying, and wondering why it took you so long to own a copy.
The review from Booklist sums this one up perfectly: “It’s easy to love these empathetic people, and their beautifully written stories.”
The ULTIMATE Career Guide for Nurses: Practical Advice for Thriving at Every Stage of Your Career
Since we train and educate prospective LVNs in Los Angeles, this list wouldn’t be complete without some solid career advice. This one gives career nurses and nursing students solid, easy-to-read, professional advice.
From Amazon’s description:
“Whether just starting out in nursing, getting ready to retire, or anywhere in between, The ULTIMATE Career for Nurses: Practical Advice for Thriving at Every Stage of Your Career offers something of value for every current and future nurse. While clinical skills are the foundation of nursing practice, so many additional skills and so much more knowledge beyond the clinical realm are necessary to have a satisfying and fulfilling career.”
Inspiring the Inspirational: Words of Hope from Nurses to Nurses
Author Sue Heacock is a career nurse who logged experience in the U.S. army before becoming an RN. As a nurse, she’s worked as in pediatrics as well as in research, so her combined knowledge will give any nursing student an excellent overview of different aspects of the career.
A Nurse’s Story
Tilda Shalof’s touching and very successful memoir tracks the experiences of the tough, funny, and deeply compassionate nurses at an ICU unit within a Canadian hospital referred to as “Laura’s Line.” We know this: you won’t be able to put it down.
This review says it better than we could:
“This is a difficult book. Its content is difficult. Its tone is difficult. But it is also difficult to put down, so compelling and beautifully written are these stores.… Shalof’s stories are naked and vulnerable. Nothing is held back in her portrayals of her most memorable experiences from the early ‘80s to the SARS crisis.… Shalof’s colleagues point out during one of their ongoing discussions about the value of their work, that eventually everyone needs a nurse. And for that reason alone, A Nurse’s Story would [sic] worth reading, in order to understand where it is most of us will end up sooner or later, what it is that might be visited upon us and just who it is that will be looking after us.… A Nurse’s Story helps us understand where it is most of us will end up sooner or later.”
Winnipeg Free Press
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives
New York Times columnist Theresa Brown is nothing if not a skilled wordsmith, and she’s also a skilled and compassionate nurse. She marries her sparkling writing talents and her mesmerizing days as a nurse to compile this best-selling memoir. This is one that we see get passed around all the time for good reason: “The Shift” is an honest, compelling, and hopeful chronicle of a single shift in a nurse’s day. It’s hard to imagine a more insightful and revealing real-life story about a nursing career. Keep the tissues handy.
Nurses do more than inspire with their words: they change the world with their actions. Are you ready to join them? Contact us today and you could be a licensed nurse in just over a year.
