From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public(The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work)

This is an invaluable book for all nurses, especially those who are proud of being nurses and who have always wanted to make others understand our passion.â•  Nursing Standard For more than a decade,  From Silence to Voice has been providing nurses with communication tools they can use to win the resources and respect they deserve. Now, in a timely third edition, authors Bernice Buresh and Suzanne Gordon focus on how nurses can describe and frame their work to seize unprecedented opportunities to advance their profession and lead improvements in health care systems.The authors, both journalists, argue that because nursing needs the support and cooperation of others to fulfill its potential, it is critical that nurses communicate the full scope of nursing practice. Nurses must go beyond describing nursing in terms of dedication and caring and articulate nurses' specialized knowledge and expertise. From Silence to Voice helps nurses explain their contributions to patient safety, satisfaction, and outcomes. It shows how nurses can communicate with various publics about important aspects of their work, such as how they master and employ complex medical technologies and regimens, and how they use their clinical judgment in life-and-death situations. "Nurses and nursing organizations," the authors write, "must go out and tell the public what nurses really do so that patients can actually get the benefit of their expert care." This comprehensively revised and updated third edition helps nurses use a range of traditional and social media to accurately describe the true nature of their work. Its analyses of images that are projected by nursing campaigns and its detailed guidance in helping nurses construct positive and powerful narratives of their work make From Silence to Voice a must-read in nursing schools and organizations and by individual nurses in all areas of the profession. Because nurses are busy, many of the communication techniques in this book are designed to integrate naturally into nurses’ everyday lives and to complement nurses’ work with patients and families. 

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I. Silent No More Chapter 1. Ending the Silence Chapter 2. The Daisy Dilemma Chapter 3. From Virtue to the Voice of Agency Chapter 4. Presenting Yourself as a Nurse Chapter 5. Tell the World What You Do Chapter 6. Creating Anecdotes and Arguments Part II. Communicating with the Media and the Public Chapter 7. How the News Media Work Chapter 8. Reaching Out to the Media Chapter 9. In Your Own Voice: Blogs, Comments, Letters to the Editor, Op-Eds Chapter 10. Getting It Right Chapter 11. Appearing on Television, Radio, and Videos Chapter 12. Opportunities and Challenges Ahead Appendix: How We Came to Write This Book Notes Index

About the Author :
Bernice Buresh writes and lectures on health care, nursing, and the media. She has been a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, a correspondent and bureau chief for Newsweek, a professor of journalism at Boston University, and an adjunct professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. Suzanne Gordon is coeditor of the Cornell University Press series The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work and was program leader of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded Nurse Manager in Action Program. She is the author of Nursing against the Odds and The Battle for Veterans' Healthcare; coauthor of From Silence to Voice, Life Support, Safety in Numbers, Beyond the Checklist, and Bedside Manners; editor of When Chicken Soup Isn't Enough; and coeditor of The Complexities of Care, First, Do Less Harm, and Collaborative Caring, all from Cornell.

Review :
"The book is written by two journalists who have taken on the nursing profession more or less the way we take on patients with a life-threatening condition that is curable but requires both intensive and long-term care. The diagnosis, according to Buresh and Gordon, is silence. By being silent, we miss the opportunity to show ourselves as consequential in the delivery of healthcare. The remedy for silence, according to the authors, is voice-our voices raised in conversation first and foremost with our families, friends, and patients, and also with the general public."-Nursing Spectrum (reviewing a previous edition) "This is an invaluable book for all nurses, especially those who are proud of being nurses and who have always wanted to make others understand our passion."-Nursing Standard (reviewing a previous edition)