Stories of Resilience in Nursing

Michael Traynor is Professor of Nursing Policy at Middlesex University, London, UK, where he works in the Centre for Critical Research in Nursing and Midwifery.

"Michael Traynor has an ability — a gift, really — to enable people to tell him the truth of their lives, at least the truth as they have experienced it. He also has the fortitude to leave the story as the person told it: fragments are often disjointed, and edges are jagged. These are nurses’ versions of what I have called the chaos stories that ill people tell: stories in which narrative implodes as the teller’s life is overwhelmed by physical breakdown and external pressures. No one who reads this book will be able to use the word resilience in the same way, ever." – Arthur W. Frank, author of The Wounded Storyteller and Letting Stories Breathe"This new book from Michael Traynor, one of nursing’s most original researchers and thinkers, is a compelling and sometimes uncomfortable read. Ten very different stories from frontline nurses gathered over twenty-five years of research are told with directness and frankness to take us with them on their deeply emotional journeys. Their tales are a tour de force of resistance and resilience as they navigate their way through complex organisations and encounters to overcome adversity and win hard-earned struggles. At a time when conventional definitions of workforce resilience transfer the responsibility for workers’ welfare from the organisation to the individual, Traynor’s redefinition through stories of migration, discrimination, whistleblowing and hierarchical intimidation is a refreshing and thought provoking challenge. The narratives which ‘tell it how it is’ are expertly interwoven with theory, debate and reflection." – Pam Smith, author of The Emotional Labour of Nursing

• 1. Let me tell you about this book 2. A tale told by a nurse… 3. Resilience – the story so far 4. Carol, the nurse who went on strike 5. Beverley, the student nurse who refused to fear 6. Laura, student nurses and the ’real’ nurses 7. Polly, the student nurse who wrote poetry and went missing 8. Simone, the nurse who stood in solidarity: working on the border between religion, madness and profession 9. John, the trauma nurse 10. Miriam’s story 11. An anonymous story 12. Yasmin, the nurse who was bullied and who bit back 13. Marta, the migrant nurse