From Silence to Voice

Bernice Buresh writes and lectures on health care, nursing, and the media. She has been a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, a correspondent and bureau chief for Newsweek, a professor of journalism at Boston University, and an adjunct professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. Suzanne Gordon is Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing and was program leader of the Robert Wood Johnson–funded Nurse Manager in Action Program. She is the author of Life Support and Nursing against the Odds, coauthor of Beyond the Checklist and Safety in Numbers, editor of When Chicken Soup Isn't Enough, and coeditor of First, Do Less Harm and The Complexities of Care, all from Cornell.

The book is written by two journalists who have taken on the nursing profession more or less the way we take on patients with a life-threatening condition that is curable but requires both intensive and long-term care. The diagnosis, according to Buresh and Gordon, is silence. By being silent, we miss the opportunity to show ourselves as consequential in the delivery of healthcare. The remedy for silence, according to the authors, is voice—our voices raised in conversation first and foremost with our families, friends, and patients, and also with the general public.(Nursing Spectrum) This is an invaluable book for all nurses, especially those who are proud of being nurses and who have always wanted to make others understand our passion.(Nursing Standard)

• IntroductionPart I. Silent No MoreChapter 1. Ending the SilenceChapter 2. The Daisy DilemmaChapter 3. From Virtue to the Voice of AgencyChapter 4. Presenting Yourself as a NurseChapter 5. Tell the World What You DoChapter 6. Creating Anecdotes and ArgumentsPart II. Communicating with the Media and the PublicChapter 7. How the News Media WorkChapter 8. Reaching Out to the MediaChapter 9. In Your Own Voice: Blogs, Comments, Letters to the Editor, Op-EdsChapter 10. Getting It RightChapter 11. Appearing on Television, Radio, and VideosChapter 12. Opportunities and Challenges AheadAppendix: How We Came to Write This BookNotesIndex