Critical Moments: Doctor and Nurse Narratives and Reflections

Critical Moments contains four memoirs by doctors and nurses looking back at their long careers of service to patients and at the effects of the sufferings of others on themselves. Each writes in a different style, blending anecdote with reflection in distinct and varied ways, but each with a sense of immediacy, responsiveness to needs, and instinctive compassion. All of these accounts present persons who love what they are doing and would never have chosen any other careers. Their minds are present to their patients and reflective for their patient's sakes. Such 'lives' embody understandings beyond the reach of textbooks. These are highly persuasive lives recorded here - lives of dignity, intelligence, and sacrifice. They are also well-rounded, balanced lives despite the specialism of their education and the enormity of suffering they work to alleviate. When reading these accounts from the perspective of illness and dependency, with all the desperation and fear that suffering arouses, one gains a deep appreciation of the price both nurses and doctors pay to preserve their own humanity. These writers agree in common that they succeed in doing so only through the interchange of their humanity with the humanity of those they serve. From the forward by Herbert W. Mason