Review

Wards and all

Handle With Care: a year in the life of twelve nurses
Liane Jones
Macmillan, 1995, £14.99

This book follows the working lives of twelve nurses from a London teaching hospital. Liane Jones has selected seven Project 2000 nursing students and five trained nurses of different grades, and experience from a wide range of specialities. She gives us a description of the nurses, their backgrounds and reasons for entering nursing. For the uninitiated, or those who have not had their fill of the blanket television ‘fly on the wall’ coverage of hospital life, it gives a fairly accurate account of life in a busy hospital.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the book is the portrayal of interactions between the nurses and patients, their families and colleagues from both the outsiders’ perspective and that of the nurses themselves. The clash of personalities and the sometimes poor working relationships with colleagues have a ring of truth about them, and the problems encountered by students on the Project 2000 programme of study are corroborated with those documented in the nursing press-though I could have done with less of the complaints.

There are a few irritating errors including the statement that there is no direct entry to midwifery training in the UK, which is misleading. This book would be of interest to a general reader and good for a young person if they are considering nursing as a career. There is little romanticism about the nurses or their work, but the rich and varied nature of nursing work and their close relationships with all kinds of people is well illustrated.