Nurses are often unsung heroes in healthcare, and as they work on the frontlines of the current health crisis, their service and commitment is making a lifesaving difference every day.
For National Nurses Week, here is a list of some fiction and non-fiction ebooks/audiobooks and some movies that highlight nurses’ hard work and dedication.
Nonfiction
Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America’s Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky
A riveting history of New York’s iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine.
Call the Nurse: True Stories of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle (The Country Nurse Series, Book One) by Mary J. Macleod & Claire Macdonald
The author, Mary’s account of the enchanted years she and her family spent on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. As the island’s district nurse, she came to know its folk as both patients and friends.
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
Hard-hitting investigative journalism that examines the harrowing experiences and heart-rending decisions made by healthcare professionals at one hospital during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Pure Grit: How American World War II Nurses Survived Battle and Prison Camp in the Pacific by Mary Cronk Farrell & First Lieutenant Diane Carlson Evans
101 American Army and Navy nurses serving in the Philippines were suddenly treating wounded and dying soldiers while bombs exploded all around them. The women served in jerry-rigged jungle hospitals on the Bataan Peninsula and in underground tunnels on Corregidor Island. Later, when most of them were captured by the Japanese as prisoners of war, they suffered disease and near-starvation for three years. The women cared for one another, maintained discipline, and honored their vocation to nurse anyone in need—all 101 coming home alive.
The World’s Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers by Michael VanRooyen
Drawing on VanRooyen’s personal experiences and those of his colleagues in international humanitarian medicine, he takes readers into clinics, wards, and field hospitals around the world where medical personnel work with inadequate resources under dangerous conditions to care for civilians imperiled by conflict.
Fiction
Bittersweet by Colleen McCullough & Cat Gould —Audiobook
A sweeping family saga of two sets of twins, all trained as nurses, coming of age in 1920s and 1930s Australia.
Virgin River Virgin River Series, Book 1 by Robyn Carr
The recently widowed Melinda Monroe arrives at the remote mountain town of Virgin River to escape her heartache, and to reenergize the nursing career she loves. She finds a tiny baby abandoned on a front porch and former marine Jack Sheridan…
Window on the Bay: A Novel by Debbie Macomber
A contemporary romance where the main character is an intensive care nurse who falls for her mother’s orthopedic surgeon. And as a bonus, her best friend is a librarian!
The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
A medical student finds himself ill-prepared for the ravages of wartime medicine during World War I, but a nurse/nun at the field hospital teaches him everything he needs to know.
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue & Kate Lock— Audiobook
A nurse who worked with Florence Nightingale is hired to care for an 11-year-old girl with a mysterious ailment in a small Irish village.
Movies on Hoopla
The English PatientFour lives—a nurse, her dying patient, a thief, and a soldier—become intertwined in an isolated Italian villa at the close of World War II
English nurse Edith Cavell is matron in a small private hospital in German-occupied Brussels during WWI. When the son of a recently deceased patient escapes from a German prisoner-of-war camp, Cavell aids him to reach Holland and safety. This leads to Cavell, a local noblewoman, the grandmother of the escaped prisoner-of-war, and others to form an organization to help Belgian, French, English and other soldiers escape as well. Eventually the Germans become aware of what’s happening and take action.
Nurses: If Florence Could See Us Now
This film offers a rare look into the complex, exciting and challenging world of being a nurse. It explores what it means to be a nurse, the many different roles that nurses play, from the bedside to the board room, and the realities of nursing – its joys and sorrows and the many ways that nurses impact the lives of others. Over 100 nurses from across the country were interviewed for this film.
-Archana, Adult Services & Acquisitions Librarian