From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know & Must Communicate to the Public [Paperback]

This book is a "must read book" for every practicing registered nurse from novice to expert. It will help you articulate to patients, families, and friends what it is you do in relation to caring for patients. I read it in my professional growth class in my second year of University, five years ago, and it has helped me emensely. Communication is essential to respect of the individual nurse and the profession as a whole.

Selina McFarlen BSN, RN University of Victoria Alumnus

From Silence to Voice by Bernice Buresh and Suzanne Gordon is a must-read for all nurses. The message of the book is one nurses need to hear: talk about your work, show the world what you do, communicate the fact that nursing is skilled, responsible and interesting work. Buresh and Gordon make clear that much of the devaluing of nursing arises out of the fact that nurses avoid the limelight. Like the ubiquitous 'good woman' behind every successful man, nurses let their work be the backdrop for medical care, and for patients managing their own care. The consequences of downplaying the contribution of nursing to patient care is that our work is not noticed, our profession is not valued, and fewer and fewer people want to become nurses. Buresh and Gordon not only argue convincingly that nurses can be their own worst enemies in this respect, they provide a comprehensive range of strategies to teach nurses how to talk about their work, and (vitally) how to make people interested in hearing about it. These strategies range from ways of talking about nursing work to friends and family, to running a media campaign to support a union action, to writing oped pieces for major newspapers. I learnt a great deal from reading and re-reading From Silence to Voice and I recommend that it be part of curriculum for nursing students, be used for professional development sessions for working nurses, and adopted as a tool kit for union activists, professional officers and nursing leaders. Whether you are a student starting out in the nursing profession, a bedside clinican, a manager, organizer or educator, Buresh and Gordon's text is an eye-opener. Nurses as individuals and as a profession need to develop the communication skills and political savvy this book offers. And we need to do it right now! Sioban Nelson, RN, PhD, BA(Hons), School of Postgraduate Nursing, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Editor, Nursing Inquiry.

Bernice and Suzanne are two journalists who have taken on the nursing profession more or less the way we take on a patient with a life-threatening condition that is curable but requires both intensive and long term care. The diagnosis is silence. On account of our collective silence, we nurses miss the opportunity to show ourselves as consequential in the delivery of health care. And, as we well know, being inconsequential is ultimately fatal not just to nursing jobs and the status of the nursing profession but to our patients, who pay the highest price for inadequate nursing care. The remedy for silence is voice--our voices raised in conversation first and foremost with our families, friends and patients and also with the general public. I love this book. It's full of stories and information. It's also refreshingly direct. My copy is marked up from front to back.