To nurture, to care, to be a nurse

To care. To advocate. To innovate. To be a nurse. In a moving tapestry of words and photographs, Nurse: A World of Care, documents and celebrates the vital and often invisible work of nurses throughout the globe. The many faces and voices of nurses are captured in compelling detail by photographer Karen Kasmauski and writer Peter Jaret. Together they paint an unforgettable and varied portrait of the profession, from the nurse midwives who walk long distances to deliver basic health care in the remote villages of Bangladesh, to the Alaska public health nurse who lives out of a sleeping bag to reach her patients, to the Thai hospice nurses who comfort and care for patients with AIDS. Nursing requires expertise, ingenuity, and a deep sense of compassion. Like the profession it celebrates, this book appeals to both hearts and minds. Around the world, health care delivery systems are in crisis. In the poorest places, millions of people lack access to even the most basic care. In the world s prosperous nations, the soaring cost of advanced medicine has begun to exact a crippling strain on budgets. High-tech medicine saves lives, but it has also led to impersonal health care systems that leave many patients feeling confused and sometimes abandoned. Shortages of nurses, meanwhile, have left rural clinics and state-of-the-art hospitals alike dangerously understaffed. Nursing itself is rising to the challenge. Innovative programs, many of them created by nurses, offer solutions to the most pressing problems we face. As this book powerfully argues, nursing is critical to delivering health care in every corner of the world. Nurses are there when life begins and when it ends offering expertise, comfort, and care. Only by recognizing and supporting their work can we hope to heal our ailing health care systems and ensure that nurses will continue to be there when we need them most.