Böcker av Cortney Davis

In poems that are sensual, emotionally searing, and yet unfailingly tender, Davis shines a caregiver's light on the most intimate details of the human body and the spirit within - how the flesh might betray, how it endures, and how ultimately it triumphs.

Over the years, Cortney Davis'' vocation as a nurse has placed her with human beings who find themselves over the threshold of injury or illness, or on the threshold of dying, at times crossing over.  Her vocation as a poet has allowed her to take these liminal moments, or hours, with patients and turn them into poems written with fearlessness, clarity, and compassion.

What is it like to be a student nurse? What are the joys, the stresses, the transcendent moments, the fall-off-your-bed laughing moments, and the terrors that have to be faced and stared down? In brave, revealing, and often humorous poetry and prose, Learning to Heal explores these questions with contributions by nurses from a variety of social, ethnic, and geographical backgrounds.

Paintings and reflections that share a nurse's personal experience of illness In the summer of 2013, Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner and author who often writes about her interactions with patients, underwent routine one-day surgery. A surgical mishap led to a series of life-altering and life-threatening complications, resulting in two prolonged hospital stays and a lengthy recovery. During twenty-six days in the hospital, Davis experienced how suddenly a caregiver can become a care receiver and what it's like to be "on the other side of the sickbed." As a nurse, she was accustomed to suffering and to the empathy such witnessing can evoke, but as a patient she learned new and transforming lessons in pain, fear, loneliness, abandonment, and dependency; in the fragility of health and life; in the necessity of family support; and, ultimately, in the importance of gratitude. Once at home, Davis wanted to respond to her illness creatively through her writing, but the details seemed too intense, too raw for words. As her recovery progressed, she found release in painting, discovering an immediate connection between heart and hand, between memory and canvas. In a series of twelve paintings, she reenvisioned episodes of her illness, moments that remained and replayed in her consciousness, ultimately providing an education in health care more resonant and more authentic than what she had found in nursing textbooks. Before, serving as a nurse in intensive care, oncology, and women's health, Davis believed that she understood what hospitalized patients might be experiencing and how they might be coping. Her own illness taught her how little she truly knew and how important it is that all caregivers--professionals and family members alike--become aware of the physical and the inner emotional needs of their seriously ill patients. After the twelve paintings were completed, Davis wrote brief commentaries for each image. She used her remembrances to clarify and expand on her artwork, thereby making her personal story accessible to others. While every patient's journey and every caregiver's challenges are unique, these intimate and revealing paintings and reflections offer a glimpse into the universal aspects of illness and recovery.

What is it like to be a student nurse washing the feet of a dying patient? To be a newly graduated nurse, in charge of the Intensive Care Unit for the first time, who wonders if her mistake might have cost a life? This book reveals a glimpse into the minds and hearts of those who care for us when we are at our most vulnerable.