The Heart's Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing

This book touched my heart. I believe the stories in this book offer a wonderful way to share my love of nursing and teach nursing students about caring. I believe this book can easily be used in an undergraduate clinical setting, plus in an ethics or professional nursing course.

Nurses and the general public will want to read this book for the secrets and for the pearls of wisdom. THE HEART'S TRUTH by Cortney Davis is a collection of essays that I wish I could have read about 30 some years ago when I was in nursing school. Or before. The essays demonstrate the merging of nurse and poet as well as the merging of science and art. While not exactly like Florence Nightingale's NOTES ON NURSING, the two books are a pair; the two books enhance the reader's knowledge base and progress toward artful observation. Seeing, alone, is not enough but seeing and knowing are the essence of the good nurse's skill. Knowledge and artful knowledge such as contained in THE HEART'S TRUTH illuminates the dark tunnel toward cynicism for the seasoned nurse and returns the nurse to the work of the ward. Such artful knowledge, such pearls of wisdom, as Davis shares in her narratives also illuminates the dark tunnel of unknowing for the student nurse. One of my favorite chapters is "Talking to No One". I suppose, I hope that if I am ever an obtunded or unresponsive patient that someone such as Davis will give me the news-of-the-day. There is myth making goin' in them thar hills. Once nurses give voice to their exquisite observations and experience as Davis has done in THE HEART'S TRUTH, a new myth and a new reality are born, side by side. We now have language to talk - to voice - about what we nurses do 24/7/365. Not surprisingly THE HEART'S TRUTH is winner of the 2010 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. Thank you Cortney Davis for these essays!