Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU
"There is no night in the ICU. There is day, lesser day, then day again. There are rhythms. Every twelve hours: shift change. Report: first all together in the big room, then at the bedside, nurse to nurse. Morning rounds. A group of doctors moves slowly through the unit like a harrow through a field. At each room, like a game, a different one rotates into the center. They leave behind a trail of new orders. Wean, extubate, titrate, start this, stop that, scan, film, scope. The steep hill the patient is asked to climb. Can you breathe on your own? Can you wake up? Can you live?"—Where Night Is Day

Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average rotation of residents through the ICU. It begins in September and ends at Christmas. It is the story of patients and families, suddenly faced with critical illness, who find themselves in the ICU. It describes how they navigate through it and find their way. James Kelly is a sensitive witness to the quiet courage and resourcefulness of ordinary people.

Kelly leads the reader into a parallel world: the world of illness. This world, invisible but not hidden, not articulated by but known by the ill, does not readily offer itself to our understanding. In this context, Kelly reflects on the nature of medicine and nursing, on how doctors and nurses see themselves and how they see each other. Drawing on the words of medical historians, doctor-writers, and nursing scholars, Kelly examines the relationship of professional and lay observers to the meaning of illness, empathy, caring, and the silence of suffering. Kelly offers up an intimate portrait of the ICU and its inhabitants.

1113557957
Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU
"There is no night in the ICU. There is day, lesser day, then day again. There are rhythms. Every twelve hours: shift change. Report: first all together in the big room, then at the bedside, nurse to nurse. Morning rounds. A group of doctors moves slowly through the unit like a harrow through a field. At each room, like a game, a different one rotates into the center. They leave behind a trail of new orders. Wean, extubate, titrate, start this, stop that, scan, film, scope. The steep hill the patient is asked to climb. Can you breathe on your own? Can you wake up? Can you live?"—Where Night Is Day

Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average rotation of residents through the ICU. It begins in September and ends at Christmas. It is the story of patients and families, suddenly faced with critical illness, who find themselves in the ICU. It describes how they navigate through it and find their way. James Kelly is a sensitive witness to the quiet courage and resourcefulness of ordinary people.

Kelly leads the reader into a parallel world: the world of illness. This world, invisible but not hidden, not articulated by but known by the ill, does not readily offer itself to our understanding. In this context, Kelly reflects on the nature of medicine and nursing, on how doctors and nurses see themselves and how they see each other. Drawing on the words of medical historians, doctor-writers, and nursing scholars, Kelly examines the relationship of professional and lay observers to the meaning of illness, empathy, caring, and the silence of suffering. Kelly offers up an intimate portrait of the ICU and its inhabitants.

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Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU

Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU

by James Kelly
Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU
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Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU

Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU

by James Kelly

Overview

"There is no night in the ICU. There is day, lesser day, then day again. There are rhythms. Every twelve hours: shift change. Report: first all together in the big room, then at the bedside, nurse to nurse. Morning rounds. A group of doctors moves slowly through the unit like a harrow through a field. At each room, like a game, a different one rotates into the center. They leave behind a trail of new orders. Wean, extubate, titrate, start this, stop that, scan, film, scope. The steep hill the patient is asked to climb. Can you breathe on your own? Can you wake up? Can you live?"—Where Night Is Day

Where Night Is Day is a nonfiction narrative grounded in the day-by-day, hour-by-hour rhythms of an ICU in a teaching hospital in the heart of New Mexico. It takes place over a thirteen-week period, the time of the average rotation of residents through the ICU. It begins in September and ends at Christmas. It is the story of patients and families, suddenly faced with critical illness, who find themselves in the ICU. It describes how they navigate through it and find their way. James Kelly is a sensitive witness to the quiet courage and resourcefulness of ordinary people.

Kelly leads the reader into a parallel world: the world of illness. This world, invisible but not hidden, not articulated by but known by the ill, does not readily offer itself to our understanding. In this context, Kelly reflects on the nature of medicine and nursing, on how doctors and nurses see themselves and how they see each other. Drawing on the words of medical historians, doctor-writers, and nursing scholars, Kelly examines the relationship of professional and lay observers to the meaning of illness, empathy, caring, and the silence of suffering. Kelly offers up an intimate portrait of the ICU and its inhabitants.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780801451683
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Publication date: 03/15/2013
Series: The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

James Kelly works in critical care as an RN in the ICU at Lovelace Women's Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Voyage into the Sea of Critical Illness
2. Diagnosis, Diagnosis, Diagnosis
3. Nursing Isn't a Journey
4. One More Day
5. The Dream of Cure
6. Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not
7. Caring
8. Medicine as Ghost Rain
9. Dying
10. Poetic and Tragic Murmurings of the Everyday
11. They Tell Us Everything
12. Can They Hear?
13. Leaving Ends the Love
14. The HorizonEpilogue
Notes

What People are Saying About This

Peter Clardy

James Kelly provides an exceptionally thoughtful narrative of the modern intensive care unit. He characterizes the rhythms of the ICU and captures odd juxtapositions of the deeply emotional and highly technical, while he explores the complex history and unspoken social hierarchy of American hospitals. Through the experience of caring for critically ill patients and their families, he ultimately delivers a moving meditation on life and death.

Brian Hodges

Where Night Is Day will be of interest to doctors, nurses, medical and nursing students, patients, and those interested in the organization of health care delivery. This excellent and compelling book marries theory to observation. James Kelly has created an intriguing presentation of social science thought about the health professions and illness, the socialization process of medical and nursing students, a clinical ethnographic study of life in an ICU, and an auto-ethnography.

Arthur W. Frank

James Kelly's ICU is a relentless and claustrophobic space where all the stories begin in the middle and only some have endings. His book is an exhilarating and humbling depiction of nursing in the twenty-first century.

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