How to Treat People: A Nurse's Notes

by Molly Case

Overview

A fascinating and poignant memoir of the body and its care, told through the experiences of a young nurse.

As a teenager, Molly Case underwent an operation that saved her life. Nearly a decade later, she finds herself in the operating room again—this time as a trainee nurse. She learns to care for her patients, sharing not only their pain, but also life-affirming moments of hope. In doing so, she offers a compelling account of the processes that keep them alive, from respiratory examinations to surgical prep, and of the extraordinary moments of human connection that sustain both nurse and patient.

In rich, lyrical prose, Case illustrates the intricacies of the human condition through the hand of a stranger offered in solace, a gentle word in response to fear and anger, or the witnessing of a person’s last breaths. It is these moments of empathy, in the extremis of human experience, that define us as people. But when Molly’s father is admitted to the cardiac unit where she works, the professional and the personal suddenly collide.

Weaving together medical history, art, memoir, and science, How to Treat People beautifully explores the oscillating rhythms of life and death in a tender reminder that we can all find meaning in being, even for a moment, part of the lives of others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324003465
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/10/2019
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Molly Case is a spoken-word artist, writer, and nurse. She was born and raised in London, where she currently works at St. George’s Hospital as a cardiac nurse specialist. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Independent, Elle magazine, and the Huffington Post.

Editorial Reviews

[How to Treat People] will restore your faith…[Case] illuminates the fascinating and never-ending loop of care in a hospital: Doctors and nurses tend to their charges for hours, often without a break, then hand them over to the next shift, and on and on and on, shuttling patients as best they can through a balky, imperfect health care system.

The New York Times Book Review - Tina Jordan

"Case has produced a serious book, one that deserves a place in the rich contemporary canon of medical memoirs…She is best when describing the conditions that mysteriously hover between physical and psychological…She shows us that the unique role of a nurse is to understand and care for people both physically and emotionally."

Guardian

"How to Treat People gets to the heart of who we are—how we live and also how we die. I was moved twice over—by the work Molly does as a nurse every day, and by the book she has written."

Nina Stibbe

"Molly Case takes us on a wondrous journey into healthcare’s mysterious world, interweaving her nursing care with science and history while, most importantly, offering her patients compassion, all in the midst of allowing us to peer into her personal life as she manages health issues striking her and her father. No one lives a life absent of illness or injury. I hope that when takotsubo syndrome (failing heart) overcomes me, Molly will be available to provide my care."

Henry Jay Przybylo

2019-06-23
A journey through the variegated days and nights of a young nurse.

Combining a near dreaminess with quotidian details, both refreshingly and intimately shared ("as a last resort, we use medication to subdue patients: haloperidol, which between ourselves we call vitamin H"), London-based Case tells the story of her first steps as a nurse. She begins by discussing "last offices," the procedures undertaken after the death of a patient. The author writes with a refreshing matter-of-factness that keeps things from becoming too opaque. She frames the narrative around the nursing checklist when first examining a patient: airway, breathing, circulation, disability, exposure. She covers each of these steps in a number of short chapters that range among compact profiles of her patients, family tales (her father was in and out of the hospital), and nursing lore and wisdom. Though Case's writing is unaffected, that doesn't mean it isn't moving. When a man died alone in her ward, she writes, "I watched as the patient seemed to disappear." Her simple explanations make for clear understanding of, for example, why a patient might try to pull out a chest drain and IV lines after an operation. Some of the most pungent passages come from what she has learned from her time on the ward. "I had become fluent," she writes, "in the way blood moved, smelt, how its colour could signal a patient's chances of survival." The action takes place at an English hospital, where Case easily swings into teaching mode. We get a smattering of Galen, Aristotle, the Tzeltal Mayans, and others on their approaches to medicine, and as the author chronicles how to analyze a pulse, she reminds us that the word comes from "pulsus," Latin for "to beat." Each chapter is a filigree, tenderly rendered no matter what the subject.

A finely wrought delineation of the art of nursing.

Kirkus Reviews

"What differentiates How to Treat People from other cracking doctor and nurse memoirs already out there is Case’s youth and her outstanding use of language. Her charm is her generation’s charm: open, loving, bold, inquisitive, caring. May she inspire her contemporaries to join her in a vital job."

Times (UK)

"Poignant.… An intimate and illuminating portrait of the private moments between patients, their families, and the nurses who care for them."

Undark - David Scales

"[How to Treat People] has a freshness and intelligence that is… beguiling.… [Nursing is] an essential profession and, in Case, it has an eloquent advocate."

Guardian - Alice O’Keeffe

"The tandem stories of Case as nurse and daughter exert the pull of a novel through pages threaded with philosophy and history, ethics and etymology."

Sunday Telegraph

"[Molly Case’s] insight into the nursing profession is a… mix of observation and empathy. Mixing personal history with medicinal history and insights into life on the ward, How To Treat People is ultimately a narrative of human connection."

Vice - Emma Garland

"Written with a poet’s ear for language and a nurse’s compassionate heart. It will make you cry, and it will buoy your faith in humanity."

Stylist

"By turns gut-wrenching in its visceral descriptions of medical emergencies, and filled with the joy and satisfaction of seeing a patient recover.… Case’s empathy and compassion are everywhere evident in this beautifully written narrative."

Sunday Times

"[Case] writes movingly about what care is on the most basic human level.… She illuminates the fascinating and never-ending loop of care in a hospital."

New York Times Book Reviews’ Choice

"[Case] writes movingly about what care is on the most basic human level.… She illuminates the fascinating and never-ending loop of care in a hospital."

Editors’ Choice - New York Times Book Review