2020: A Year of Nursing Through the Covid-19 Pandemic - A Memoir

Anne Sellar: As a nurse I could relate

Canada on Mar 27, 2023

Faith: Really important insight into what healthcare workers have endured these past few years. "Don't look away" was my mantra while reading. Is it an angry memoir? Of course it is. But it has every right to be, after what the author (and other healthcare workers) have endured. I'd be angry too, and frankly I'm angry on their behalf. I think having accounts by essential workers documented in such a way will be extremely valuable for when we (eventually) look back and try to make sense of what we all lived through.

Canada on Feb 03, 2022

Canadian gal: A stunning journal by an ICU nurse about being one of the first front-line nurses to treat covid patients in the SF Bay area. Her views about the pandemic are based on personal experience and they are terrifying. In fact, if you are dismissive about the chances of dying from this dreaded disease, you'll run to the nearest medical facility to get your vaccine. Cassie has seen what this thing does, and she makes no excuses or apologies. Run, hide, and get your vax. It's not over, people. And hug a nurse virtually, or send flowers, chocolate or anything to the nearest icu — because they deserve to be appreciated.
Cassie describes the horrendous personal tole on front line staff during the worst days, the need for ongoing therapy and self-care to get through it, and the heart-wrenching times of telling people that their loved one has died, or seeing the stroke victim come through those doors long after having had covid. Death may not scare you, but how does living in a wheelchair unable to breathe or not being able to swallow food sound to you? Who will pay those bills when you can't work from chronic fatigue? This virus has long lasting and serious side-effects. Don't play...

Canada on Nov 29, 2021

Iola: Year of the Nurse isn't the kind of book I normally read. I read fiction. Christian fiction. Year of the Nurse is a memoir written by a non-Christian. It's full of black humour and swearing, and blames a lot of stuff on God (and Trump, Fox News, and Evangelical Protestants in general). In other words, it's everything I usually try and avoid in my recreational reading.

Yet I was hooked from the opening page.

It's written by an ICU nurse in California who realised volunteered to nurse on the Covid ward in 2020, the Year of the Nurse as proclaimed by the World Health Organization to honour the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale.

The memoir is an edited compilation of her tweets, blog posts and private journal, interspersed with commentary about what it all means. Some of it is pretty technical, but the author has the ability to translate complex medical principles into language a non-professional can read and understand.

It's a hard read.

The author starts before the USA has its first case of Covid-19, when she's watching the TV news and sees nurses in Italy proning patients (positioning them on their stomachs). I saw those...

United States on Oct 26, 2021

Chris Hill: Although I felt a great deal of sympathy for anyone working in the health service during this terrible time this book was just a rant. I gave up half way through. This poor nurse is just so terribly angry with everything in her life.

United Kingdom on Oct 05, 2021

Lori D'Amico: A few years ago, we likely could not have imagined a world like the one we are currently living in. This previously unheard of virus rears it's ugly head in another country. Most of us think "it won't affect us much here...and if it does, they'll treat us and life goes on." Until we realized, that's NOT the way this virus acts! It infects, it spreads, it devastates lung tissue, hearts, human connections. It disrupts work, education, personal lives, healthcare systems, ones finances, the economy, religious gatherings and so much more! It also kills. And meanwhile, we had a president who in my opinion, as well as the opinion of this author, minimized the seriousness of the virus, outright lied about it, and politicized it at every turn! This book makes VERY clear the author's outrage at the insanity of it all and the impact it had on her as a nurse and a human being.
I can't say that I disagree with her on many points. I have thus far done my part: stayed home, only left my home for a trip to get groceries when needed and wore a mask, used hand sanitizer and even sanitized my shopping cart handle. When vaccines were available, I got the jab and still wore a mask! I also did not...

United States on Aug 30, 2021

ObiJanKenobi: As a retired ICU nurse myself, I was compelled to read Ms Alexander's memoir even though I knew a lot of what she would say. COVID-19 was foreshadowed by SARS but I don't think even the most astute observer could have foreseen the utter devastation of the health care system or the loss of life we've experienced in just 18 months. Year of the Nurse doesn't gloss over any of the horror health care workers have and still are dealing with. Because nurses have the greatest amount of patient contact and carry out the lion's share of treatment, they're also the ones who see the worst of it. PTSD was problematic for ICU staff before COVID-19, but there's a tsunami of it coming, with NO plan to manage it.

For those readers who need a language warning, you may choose not to read this book to protect your own sensibilities. But guess what? Nurses swear. A lot. It's the only pop-off valve they have at times. So if you're offended by F-bombs and are likely to criticize someone whose shoes you've never worn because of them, move along. You're not going to understand the story anyway.

Canada on Aug 26, 2021