A nurse’s story: what it takes to do the ‘hardest job of all’
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A nurse’s story: what it takes to do the ‘hardest job of all’

Thelma Agnew @ThelmaAgnew Commissioning editor, Nursing Standard

Award-winning novelist Christie Watson was the keynote speaker at this year’s RCN congress. Her account of a 20-year hospital career captures visceral truths about what it is to be a nurse

In her new book, Christie Watson set out to do something that sounds simple, but isn’t: ‘I wanted to describe the job of nursing.’ As Watson sees it, nursing is bigger, more complex, more demanding than any other profession. ‘It is very hard to put into language because it is metaphorical, it is quite abstract. It is not just one art, it is all the arts – it is everything all at once.

Nursing Standard. 33, 3, 28-30. doi: 10.7748/ns.33.3.28.s21

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