Nursing, Writing, and Humanity: An Interview with Theresa Brown

Transcript

Hello
and welcome to the latest
installment of the University of
Pittsburgh Humanities podcast, a
series devoted to exploring the
humanities, their intersections with
other disciplines, and their value
in the public world.
I'm Dan Kubis, assistant director of
the Humanities Center at Pitt.
My guest today is Theresa Brown,
nurse, columnist, and author of
The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve
Hours, Four Patients' Lives.
Even if all I do is go in and flush
an I.V. line, I try to always just
reach down and just touch their hand
when I'm done because it's also
a way of saying, "I see
you.
You're not just a task, but
you're a person." And that's
probably the connection that nurses
need to make, which is
different from physicians but
equally as important.
Theresa began her career as a writer
in 2008 when she published an essay
in the New York Times about a
dramatic and emotional experience
she had with a dying patient.
The piece received national
attention and was anthologized in
the Best American Science Writing
and the Best American Medical
Writing in 2009.
Since then, she has written dozens
of pieces about nursing and has
become a leading voice for nurses
and nurse advocacy across the
country.
Her first book, Critical Care, was
published in 2010 and is widely
used as a textbook in nursing
schools.
Theresa's writing frequently pulls
back the curtain on the experiences
and challenges that nurses face in
their daily work.
Sometimes this reveals frustrating
working conditions or difficulties
dealing with hospital
administration. But just as
frequently, it shows the strength,
skill, and commitment that nurses
need to provide their patients with
the best care they can.
So it's no surprise that President
Obama quoted from Theresa's blog
when he was advocating for the
Affordable Care Act in 2009.
In
what she calls her past life,
Theresa received a Ph.D.
in English from the University of
Chicago and was an English professor
at Tufts University.
I began by asking her about this
past and about the somewhat
nontraditional path she took to
becoming a nurse.
As I've said many times before, this
is the million-dollar question.
Why would an English professor
become a nurse?
And there are a lot of people who
thought I was nuts. So I think
I've convinced some I'm not.
But essentially,
my dad was a professor, and growing
up it just seemed like a really
great job.
You could get paid to be in this
world of ideas and books.
And I loved that.
I got my Ph.D.
in English. I was teaching at Tufts,
and I found out that the job itself
for me was not the ideal.
I liked it. I think I was good
enough at it, but it just didn't
quite do it for me.
So it's kind of like, oh, now,
what am I going to be when I grow
up? And then, I became
a mom in the middle of that and
had our son, and then got pregnant
with twins.
And that just caused
a huge life change
and in hard ways because of the lack
of sleep and all the laundry,
but in really great ways, like
all the love and the fun.
And then I thought, "Oh, well,
this is the kind of job I want to
do, but what kind of job is that?"
And I had midwives
for that pregnancy, and I was
telling a friend of mine who's a
nurse, "Well, I just thought the
midwives had the coolest job in the
world." And she said, "Theresa,
you could do that job."
And it had never occurred to me
that I could become a nurse.
But then I did it.
Well, I want to also ask
you, then, about your description in
the beginning of your first book,
Critical Care. You
made your change from being
an English professor to being a
nurse, and it felt right
to you. But it took a while for
there to be a kind of crystallized
moment where you realized why it
felt right. And you talk about an
experience you have with an 11 year
old boy as being a moment where
you did have that realization and
talking with him at night about the
condition that he was in.
Can you talk a little bit about that
moment and what it was in particular
about that that caused that
realization for you?
Well, it was my last night
of clinical as a student.
So really the end of my
journey as a student nurse.
And I was
not working on an oncology floor,
but he was an oncology patient.
Came in with his dad,
and they'd been there a lot and were
obviously trying to make it fun
by eating a big bag of potato chips
and watching TV.
But it's not
really fun.
I mean, I admired the effort.
And then, in the middle of the
night, he just started to feel
really terrible
and most
likely was septic
and really low blood pressure.
And I ended up--
the nurse I was working with, we
ended up having to send
him to the pediatric intensive care
unit, and his dad
slept through a lot of it, which
at the time was kind of shocking
to me. And then afterward, when he
woke up, and I saw the look on his
face. I realized that he had
just been through this so many times
that either he was sound
asleep or he just couldn't face it.
And then, thank goodness that we
were there, right?
So that he didn't have to.
But the amalgam
of need and
being able to care for someone
and having to do
it on their time,
but also being able to help
them.
That combination
is what really sold me.
And that nursing is so
intimate.
Of course, we had to call in an ICU
fellow and the resident,
but it was really me
there with him. I love
that, that close connection with
people.
Yeah.
Speaking about that connection, one
thing that I really liked reading
about also in your first book
is you write about not only
how much you enjoyed the
process of hearing people and being
there for them but also you found it
important, despite the fact that you
had been counseled in
nursing school, not to share
that much-- not to disclose personal
details. You found that that was a
really important thing for you to be
doing, not only to be hearing what
people say but also to be sharing.
And that you talk about a-- and you
tell an anecdote about feeling like
you can't use cell phones.
Something like that.
Little details.
But they're important for you.
And that was I really thought that
was interesting that you can create
that kind of two-way street with
your patients.
Yeah. And I think it's all about to
use our words now, boundaries
and appropriateness.
I mean, that was the situation.
In fact, I call that chapter
Openings because the patient had
this huge opening in his abdomen
from surgeries. And it was about
that opening and also me finding
a way to communicate with him
because he was having a really hard
time.
But I found also that even
on a much more basic level, people
want to know that I'm a person
because it makes them feel like
they're not just a patient.
So in the hospital, people
would say, "Well, how are you
doing?" And they really wanted
an answer.
They didn't want me to just say,"
I'm fine." Now, they didn't want
me to say, "Oh, my God, I'm
overwhelmed. Our cat just died.
And the heater won't work."
Too much sharing is also bad.
Yeah. And they don't want
to hear about all
my pain. And that's not why I'm
there. But they want
to feel like I'm a human.
Because they're human then too.
Another thing that I thought was
great in terms of
things you learned while being a
nurse, and you write about this in
The Shift, is the importance of
physical contact.
You reference another, a physician
writer, Abraham Verghese, who talks
a lot about that.
And for him, he talks
about touch being important not only
in terms of making a diagnosis but
also in terms of getting
a patient to join you
in his or her
care of something.
Have you found that it's a similar
kind of importance that touch plays
a similar role for you?
I do think it really matters.
We don't diagnose as nurses, so
it's not at that level, but
it really establishes a sense of
trust and also connection.
And it's
also a way of saying, "You know, no
matter what's going on with you, if
you have a terrible rash, if
you're in pain, if
you
don't smell very good, because we
need to get you cleaned up.
You know, I am not
afraid of your body." And
I think it's really important to
say that to people.
Yeah. I remember a talk
from Abraham Verghese where he
talks about there's a
belief that a patient has that the
doctor will always be there
for him and do what the doctor
can to care for this patient.
And the touch is the thing that kind
of seals that.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Yeah.
And with nurses too.
It's that even if-- I think I wrote
about this in the shift. Even if all
I do is go in and flush an I.V.
line, I try to always just
reach out and just touch their hand
when I'm done because it's also
a way of saying, "I see
you.
You're not just a task, but
you're a person." And that's
probably the connection
that nurses need to make.
Which is different from physicians
but equally as important.
Yeah, I'm reminded
of some of when you
talk about in nursing school, you
learn not to disclose too many
things, but you learned how
important it was to do that.
You talk also in some of your
writing about the fact that you were
not prepared in
nursing school to do some of the
things that have been the most
important parts of your work.
Talking about death, I'm thinking
about in particular. This isn't
something that you're prepared for.
Have you found that you did
need to learn a lot
on the job? I suppose it's
inevitable that you will have
to do that. But could you have been
prepared better for those things?
Is it a problem with nursing
education that these things aren't a
part of the education process?
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, I went to Pitt. So
I actually feel like it was a really
great program, and I got what
I needed. But yeah.
And I think medical students too.
Particularly on the subject of death
and dying, they're starting to
learn more about it.
And I'm guessing that nursing
schools are, too, although I don't
know about that.
So it might have just been that
everybody was so busy
hiding from that topic, and now
we've brought it out from under
the shadow.
But yeah. There's definitely
actually all kinds of things about
communication that
would make the first job easier
if we learned more about
them. What do doctors want to hear
from us? How is it best to talk to
another nurse?
We learn a lot about talking to
patients, but we don't learn about
talking to each other.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting.
I also wanted to ask you a little
bit about working in
hospital settings. Because
one of the things I found that was
really interesting in The Shift
is you talk about one of your
patients there, a patient named
Sheila, and
the time that you spend dealing--
she's been misdiagnosed in the book,
and you spend some time
talking with her.
And she's very concerned.
Her family's there.
They're very concerned.
And you write about the time that
you spent talking with all of them
about her condition.
And then, you say afterward that
even though it may be the most
important thing you do during your
shift, it goes unrecorded.
Right.
But you also spend a lot of time
talking about how much work you have
to do to record so many other parts
of your job. Yet this is the thing
that made me want to ask is it
the case, then, that hospitals are
not incentivizing
the most important part of the job
that you can do as a nurse?
Wow. What an amazingly smart
question.
Yes, I think that is true.
No one's ever put it like that
before.
Yes. And yet still,
the expectation is that we will
be empathic and we will be there for
people.
But then, there's so many more
task-oriented things that we get
evaluated on that
it really is not
incentivized.
Hate to use that word, but it's the
right word, I think.
Yeah.
We're expected to do
the human things that actually
nurses love doing, but we're not
judged for doing those
things unless you really, really
screw it up.
You know, somebody complains. And
I was just at a conference,
actually, where people were talking
a lot and a lot about that.
But thinking
that small fixes can make a big
difference. And I
don't think so.
I think we've put our values
on the wrong things, and there's got
to be a change in
that way.
Do you have any thoughts about some
kind of big-picture changes that
might move us in a
direction where some of these
human and very important parts of
being a nurse could take center
stage more than they currently do?
I think there's two issues.
One is now documentation
has gotten to the point where it
seems like we're supposed to record
everything.
Every little detail in triplicate
from multiple dropdown menus.
And it's extremely time-consuming
and alienating and
doesn't lead to supporting
nurses giving whole care
to the patient. So there's that.
But that, I think, springs from a
kind of lack of trust in the value
of actual human
connection.
And I see as an analog to
this what's going on in education.
We can't just trust that if we have
good teachers and normal-sized
classrooms and standard
equipment, that they'll do a good
job. There has to be all this
evaluating and standardization
and looking at metrics. And
I'm not saying there's no value to
any of that, but
when you're talking about
human-to-human interaction, you've
got to trust at some level
that you
pick the right people. And they can
pull that off, and they can achieve
from that interaction what they are
meant to achieve.
And maybe you can't measure
that,
or you need to think really, really
creatively about how to
measure it.
And we're not doing that.
Yeah.
In The Shift, you write about two
articles by a psychiatrist, Leonard
Stein, The Doctor-Nurse Game.
You say these are two of the best
articles you know of.
He wrote in 1967 about it and then
again in 1990, revisited
the issue. Said there had been some
changes. Can you talk a little bit
about those articles and why they
mean so much to you?
Yeah. And I
love it that those articles are just
so old school.
There's no data, but what they're
saying rings totally true.
So he calls it The Doctor-Nurse
Game in the sense of a psychological
game, not like a game like Monopoly.
The communication is always loaded
in some way.
So in the earlier version of the
article, he says nurses
have to act as if every idea
is actually the physician's idea.
So
I make a phone call saying, "Mrs.
Jones is vomiting.
Do you think that Zofran would be a
good idea?" A standard
antiemetic drug.
And everything has to be presented
like that. And then.
In the revision of The Doctor-Nurse
Game, he says that
now nurses are "stubborn
rebels." We're going from
an era where women especially
were more compliant to the-- women's
movement starting, right?
We're having political protests.
So the nurse is now a stubborn
rebel, and the same
phone call would turn into, "Well,
Mrs. Jones is vomiting.
Are you going to do anything about
that?"
Very different tone.
Yes.
And what I like is I will admit
that I've done both those things and
more.
I have wheedled, I have argued.
And what's sad is
that it seems like there's not
that many situations where I can say
a doctor and I just talk to each
other as colleagues and equals.
That there's always
a feeling of, okay, how am I going
to get what I want
here? And even more
than that, how am I going to get
this person to share
his or her knowledge with
me so together we can make the best
decision?
Well, you mentioned the bullying
being another topic. I did not know
that this was as big an issue
as it was before reading your work,
but you talk about your experience
with it between nurses.
And after
learning a little bit about it from
your work, I kind of looked into it
and realized there's a vast amount
of literature, and that is a big
problem within the field.
Yes.
You write a little bit about it
being related to this hierarchy
issue and where kind
of nurses fall on that hierarchy.
Being
lower down on the totem pole, as you
say, when things go wrong,
you take it out on other nurses.
Have there been any changes since
you've been in the field in this?
Are there promising
attempts being made to address the
issue?
Well, first of all, the issue being
a lot more public.
So I see that
as a huge change, and
people acknowledging it as a
problem.
I've given talks on this, and people
ask me, "Do you know a place
where this really works?
What can we do about this?"
The best talk opportunity
I had was to talk
to a group of not
malpractice lawyers but people who
do risk assessment for health
care systems.
And it was one of those few moments
where I felt like from my mouth to
God's ears because
I could say to them, "You know,
you should really care about this
because this is what
can cause an event that
actually ends up leading to a huge
malpractice suit." And there
had just actually been one announced
in Pittsburgh. I won't go into the
details. Like right before I gave my
talk, which was perfect because the
whole issue was a
middle-of-the-night communication
between a nurse and a doctor.
And I said, "You know, you can look
at this, and you can say,
'Seems like this nurse didn't know
how to do her job.' And that may be
what happened.
Or it may be that there's
a whole history of bad communication
between this physician and this set
of nurses.
And someone
ended up having a really, really,
really bad outcome as a result
of that." So that's what I hope
is that people are
starting to understand
that letting
these bad boy doctors -
and it usually is bad boys -
behave the way they are is really
detrimental to the system overall.
And the other point to make is that
people always say, "Well, it's these
doctors who are the big earners."
Those doctors are not earning
all that money for the hospital
and themselves by being
jerks and abusive.
It's in spite of that.
So that can't be an
excuse.
And when I talk to people who
work with physicians who have
these issues, they say, "Actually,
you know, the doctors don't really
like how they're behaving either.
I mean, it's not like these are
sociopaths.
They're just really overwhelmed
and stressed, and they
have issues, right?" But
for them, the opportunity to learn
a different way to be
tends to come as a relief.
And if it doesn't, then they
leave. They just find another job.
So you've spent, I think,
most of your career
as a nurse working in a hospital
setting. But recently, you've
changed, and you provide in-home
end-of-life care now.
Is that right? So you're outside the
hospital setting?
Yes.
Has working in
that-- has that change allowed you
to focus more
on doing some of the things that you
feel are most important in nursing?
That is, having a personal
relationship, providing personal
care to someone, and
doing some of those things that you
value most about being a nurse.
Yes. In particular, being able to
have uninterrupted conversations
with people, because honestly, after
working in the hospital and writing
The Shift, I was being sort of
stuck. And one day in the hospital,
I was feeling a little bit burned
out with just the level of
interruption and never being able
to focus on one
person at a time.
And I love it that I can
do that.
It's amazing.
My phone might ring
once.
It's very different from the
experience you describe in The
Shift.
Yes, yes.
And even then, I can usually say,
"I'm at a patient's home.
Can I call you back?" So
I love
that. And it's given me back
a sense of why I
got into this job.
There's also times when I miss the
hospital, and I feel nostalgic,
but I've loved
that aspect of the work.
And I also love, oddly
enough, that people
are in charge in their own homes.
The classic
example of someone who's on oxygen
who still smokes,
which is dangerous.
Right? And my supervisor,
we were talking about this at a
meeting, and she said, "Sometimes
all you can do is say to them,
'Could you please just turn the
oxygen off while you're smoking.'"
Like they're not going to stop
smoking, and they need the oxygen.
And I really love
that. That there's a negotiation,
like, well, you know?
Well, I don't always feel like
taking this pill, like, okay.
Well, let's talk about of these
three pills, which one is the
most important for you to take every
day? Because in the hospital,
it's you'll do this, and you'll wear
this, and you'll eat this, and
you'll go here, and you'll stay
there.
And it's very hard on people.
So maybe patients-- maybe your
patients get to be themselves a
little bit more when they feel like
they're in a place they can have
some more autonomy.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Well, I want to ask you a little bit
about writing as well.
When you started as
a nurse, you did not think, "I'm
going to write about this." That was
something that you did because of
a certain experience.
I wonder, can you talk a little bit
about what that experience was and
what prompted you?
Why that particular experience led
you to need, really, to
write about it?
Yes, I was still a pretty
new nurse, and I had
a patient who was set to go home
that afternoon and start coughing
up blood. And then, start
basically
spitting up blood or almost like
spewing up blood and
dying. And we
called the code and ran the code,
but she
wasn't going to make it.
And she didn't make it.
And
I couldn't get past the experience.
I mean, I went back to work, but I
felt very haunted,
and I thought, "Well if I can write
this down,
it will be contained." And
that doesn't really work.
I feel like basically what I've
realized is you never get over
something like that, but you make
peace with that.
But it's just a part of
who you are as a health care
provider.
And when I talk about it, I see
a lot of nods in the audience.
So I think it's a pretty common
experience.
That first sudden, violent
death.
But I liked what I wrote, and
so I thought, "Well, aim high.
I'm going to send this to the New
York Times." And actually, a friend
of my brother's is
on the editorial staff, and I
sent it somewhere else to the
magazine. I never heard from them,
but he said, "You know, this is
really good. I hope this is okay." I
sent it to the Science Times, and
they liked it.
And they took it.
So very, very excited.
Took six months to actually get into
print.
But then, when it came
out, it got a huge,
huge national
reaction, which I'm not
saying as a way of bragging.
I really didn't expect it at all.
And I started hearing from editors
and agents saying,
"This is a voice. We never hear the
voice of a bedside nurse,"
which was so incredibly
empowering to me.
And you've written more or less
continuously since then.
In the times I mentioned earlier,
all of the attention that you got
for the piece you wrote about
doctor-nurse relationships in 2011,
I think. You mentioned in one
interview I read that you actually
had to talk to an administrator
after that. So that's one
kind of, I guess,
repercussion of being a public
writer and being a nurse.
How has that
experience been for you all along
the way? Are you looked at with some
kind of suspicion?
I can imagine that being one way
that people would relate to you.
But what's that been like in
general?
Yeah, there's definitely been
suspicion.
There were nurses who loved what I
did, and there were
a few nurses who,
for different reasons, didn't.
And I sort of worked with
talking to them and saying, "Oh, I
was thinking about writing about
this, and you were
in it." And they
were always fine with it.
But then, there were times when,
even when people were de-identified
or they just they felt kind
of exposed, even though no one would
know who they were.
And the hard thing for me was that
people wouldn't necessarily
come to me directly and say,
"Here's how I feel," which
I can see that that's hard.
But when you're all working
together, just I wish people had
done that, but whatever.
But since leaving
that job, I found more hospitable
employers.
And the challenge
for me is to just make it clear that
I'm there to work.
I'm not there to be super nurse
or Theresa
Brown, the author.
And people get that, and they go
with it. So they'll kind of say,
"Oh, you're that writer, right?" And
we sort of talk about it.
And then I'm like, "Okay, so what
about this patient?"
Yeah. I imagine if you did have
people come up to you and talk to
you, whether they agreed with you or
not, that would be
a really productive experience for
you. But instead, it's a shame that
that's not more of the reaction that
you get from your colleagues.
Yeah. I would have appreciated
that. Yeah. Like, let's
have a conversation about this.
But I don't know if it's
the power of being in print that
makes people feel intimidated
or especially talking
about end of life.
That was not
always popular in oncology
because a lot of oncologists just
feel like you shouldn't
talk about that.
You shouldn't talk about hospice.
You just should never bring
it up. And
I would love it if that would
change.
So that created tension.
People felt like I just shouldn't be
going there and writing about it.
Yeah, yeah.
It's interesting because you said
death-- you write this in maybe
both of your books, but death is so
present in your work.
And then, also when you're writing.
For that to be something
that is-- that
there's some kind of a taboo against
talking about it. Seems like that
would be one of the most important
things that you could prepare
yourself for.
Yeah. Well, that gets back to the
question you asked at the start
about are we prepared to talk to
patients about death and not
really. I mean, I even remember, as
a student, having
a patient who the husband
had made the decision to put
his wife in hospice.
I don't remember why, but it was
this patient that ended up doing a
kind of write-up about.
And my instructor said, "Well,
you're just basically sending this
woman to the funeral home." I
said, "You know, no.
This is the husband's decision.
It's very well-founded." And I
actually ended up
talking to him a fair amount about
it.
And that was kind
of the start of saying, "Oh, I can
do this." It's not you don't
know you can do it because we don't
get a lot of opportunities in life.
Yeah.
There's a fascinating study
that you've referenced, and that is
also, I think, I read in Atul
Gawande. His latest book from
Massachusetts General Hospital, of
patients who accept hospice
care, not only having less suffering
towards the end of their lives but
actually living longer.
Yes.
Yes.
It's not you're saying sending this
person to the funeral home.
It's quite the opposite, in fact. The
numbers show.
Right.
And that's one of the big
misconceptions we have to struggle
against in hospice that
people think the goal
of hospice is for people to die.
And it's not.
It's for people to live the
absolutely best life they can
until they die.
And certainly, if there was someone
on hospice with a certain kind of
cancer and an amazing treatment
came out. And they wanted to
try it, and they could stand
it, I'd be the first person to say,
"You should definitely do that."
We want everybody to live as well
as they can, but we
are all going to die.
It sucks, but it's true.
That's the effort to prolong
life at all costs.
It seems like there's
a strange kind of goal
of immortality somehow behind that.
Once you accept mortality,
then you can get all kinds of
positive results from that.
That otherwise, you wouldn't
be able to do. Quality of life being
one of them.
Right.
Right. And just do you want to end
your life in
an ICU hooked up to machines?
You can't talk to your family.
And if somebody wants that,
that's fine.
But do people understand
that they're making a choice,
and they could be at home?
They could have the people they love
around them. They could actually
have conversation.
And usually, if you present it like
that, people
will choose that.
And then, it's how do we help them
make the most of that time.
Yeah.
Well, one other question about your
writing I wanted to ask is about
your style.
As someone who was an English
professor, I'm sure you're aware
of style. The writing style.
You paid a lot of attention to it in
your past life.
How did you come to the style you
currently use? Have you thought
about it a lot over the years?
Was it something you worked on a lot
before you sent your first piece
out? And how has it changed since
you've been writing over the years,
or how do you think about that?
Oh, I think
the truth is I don't think about
it. It's just what
I do.
It's sort of what goes on in my
head.
That kind of spare
style.
And when I try to get too
flowery or metaphorical, it usually
just is like embarrassingly bad.
Those must be in early drafts.
So I
think what I've learned is what I'm
good at.
Interesting
detail, which I hope it's
interesting to other people, but
I'm also very spare with commas.
And so, the copy
editor went through and added
a whole bunch of commas.
And then, I went through and took
some of them out
and then got a note back
saying, "Well, we
went along with the comma decisions
to accommodate the writer's spare
style."
So the point being that
even at that level, it was important
to me to have a sense of
flow and control over the sentences.
That's just the way it
comes out.
Yeah.
I was kind of thinking about it as
I was reading and knowing your
background. And I had thought about
it in terms of the-- some of the
words that came to mind were
measured and kind of respectful in
a way. And then, I read a passage
of yours talking about the kinds of
relationships you have in
friendships you form with other
nurses, and you talk about it being
no-nonsense.
And it seemed to me that it was kind
of the way that you were writing
was, in a way, kind of like
respectful of the work that you were
doing as a nurse.
And that it had that no-nonsense
kind of character to it.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I love Joseph Conrad.
I love Faulkner.
I love their incredible writing.
But I think the styles
that really speak to me are
Hemingway, Raymond Carver.
I mean, I just
love that spareness.
And apologies for mentioning all
women. Flannery O'Connor also has
that.
I mean, all men.
I'm sorry. Mentioning all men.
Yeah.
Well, it's really the very-- it
creates a very moving work
for me when I read.
Definitely.
My last question is, what are your
plans for your writing from here on?
Do you have anything-- I mean,
you're going to keep, I hope, writing
for The Times. But other than that,
are there other projects you have in
mind that are larger than that?
There will be a third book.
It's sort of a light
on the back burner of my brain, and
that's about as far as
it's gotten.
It might be something about
end-of-life and hospice, but
there are so many books about that
now. I need to make sure I have
something that's
new enough to be worthwhile to
say.
But yeah, I will keep at it.
Well, we look forward to more of
your work. And Theresa Brown, thanks
so much for joining us.
Thank you.
That's it for this edition of Being
Human. Stay tuned next time when my
guest will be Jeff Williams,
professor of English at Carnegie
Mellon University and author of How
to Be an Intellectual.
Thanks for listening.

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Title
Nursing, Writing, and Humanity: An Interview with Theresa Brown
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh (depositor)
Brown, Theresa (interviewee)
Kubis, Dan (interviewer)
Date
August 5, 2016
Identifier
20230127-beinghuman-0010
Description
An interview with Theresa Brown, nurse, New York Times columnist, and author of "The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives". Theresa's talk and reading at Pitt in September, 2015 was the kick-off event for the Year of Humanities. This interview focuses on her work as a nurse, and the relationship between her lives as a writer and health care professional.
Extent
33 minutes
Publisher
University of Pittsburgh. Department of English
Type
sound recording-nonmusical
Genre
interviews
Subject
Nursing
Women authors
Brown, Theresa
Source
Being Human
Language
eng
Collection
Being Human Podcast Recordings
Contributor
University of Pittsburgh
Rights Information
In Copyright. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).. Rights Holder: University of Pittsburgh
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Rights Holder
University of Pittsburgh

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Nursing, Writing, and Humanity: An Interview with Theresa Brown

In collections