Meditations on Hope: Nurses' Stories about Motivation and Inspiration

Meditations on Hope, Nurses' Stories about Motivation and Inspiration Edited by Paula M. Sergi, BSN, MFA, and Geraldine Gorman, RN, PhD (New York: Kaplan, 2009) By Judy Schaefer Rarely do you get to observe nurses meditate so clearly and openly while they measure themselves and their wits against their sensitive clinical and psychological tasks. Rarely do you get to see the inner workings of how we nurses are motivated and inspired. So close is the body to the soul. Or is it? And, if so, how do we know? How will we ever know? But nurses think about it. We meditate on what motivates and inspires our patients and ourselves. Metaphors abound such as the doorway to heaven, the coal shute to hell, or a return to pre-illness health can be like a garden gate or a bright opthalmic light of an iris. There are metaphors too numerous to mention and many of them get used within the narratives of Meditations on Hope (New York: Kaplan, 2009). But for the most part these stories are refreshingly clean of analysis and literary posturing. Nurses are more than hand maidens in today's world, although by necessity a staff nurse on a frantic ward is task oriented. Nurses meditate and reflect. They pray and they imagine. They fall on their knees unexpectedly to a higher power and say "thank you"! They read prose and poems by other nurses and grow a distance apart so that they can look back again and come back again to the patient's bedside with a new found compassion and understanding of their role in healing. Some books are especially binding of the nurse to their profession--in returning the nurse to renewal and energy. Meditations on Hope, (New York: Kaplan, 2009) edited by Paula M. Sergi and Geraldine Gorman, two nurses, is such a book. The 23 writers in this book are nurses or nursing students. There are 160 pages with a reader's guide. There is no specific organization or structure to the 23 narratives and no structure is required. The reader will sense that they are in the midst of a dialogue between nurses. The reader can come, go, and read at their leisure as time might allow, just as nurses quickly report and consult with each other - as time allows between patients, charts, physicians, stat orders, pre-ops, labs, and diagnostics. While perhaps we listen most closely to those who have had similar experiences in venues like our own, Meditations on Hope, offers reflective intellectual thought not only to nurses but to chaplains, parish nurses, social workers, physicians, theologians, teachers of all disciplines, and to any and all who want to know what happens at the bedside 24/7/365. There is some magic in those hours, days, and years and there is also some raw survival and failure to rescue in those same hours, days, and years. Meditations on Hope is a window into the experience of nurses who have taken the time and literary distance to provide narratives of what-it-is-like. The history of creative writing in nursing worldwide is now approaching

AS a registered nurse for 34 years, I have spent 30 of those years in community based settings. The stories in Meditations on Hope reminded me of many of the clients I have visited over the years. Their inner strength and hopefulness have continued to inspire me, and it was nice to be reminded of those clients through the words of other nurses. Thank you!!!