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Join the MNA Ethics Committee Book Club Welcome to our readers, whether first-to-last pagers or skimmers or wannabes! The MNA Ethics Committee extends a warm invitation to join in on engaging and enriching conversations with other MNA nurses. This Book Club meets five times a year, and offers not only connection with other nurses, but also 2.0 nursing contact hours! We are using Zoom as our platform for meeting with all the bonus material it includes, such as pets, babies, and coffee mug wisdom. It’s an informal venue, yet often yields great insights for the time spent in discussion with one another. Use the MNA event calendar at www.mnnurses.org/events to reserve your spot. You will receive a reminder email with the Zoom link prior to the book clubs. Hope to see you often in 2022! All book club meetings take place on Thursdays from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Book club selections for 2022: January 20 Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirdre English (1993) Medicine has always been an arena of struggle between female practitioners and male professionals. This pamphlet explores two important phases in the male takeover of health care: the suppression of witches in medieval Europe and the rise of the male medical profession in the United States. March 17 Duty of Care: One Doctor’s Story of the COVID-19 by Dr. Dominic Pimenta (2020) This is a nonfiction account of a doctor’s experiences working in a National Health Service (NHS) ICU ward during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with much of the book focusing on the events that occurred in March and April of 2020. It provides some great insights into the struggles that the NHS faced at the beginning of the pandemic, which only worsened as the case count climbed. May 19 You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience by Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown (2021) There is no doubt currently in anyone’s mind that there is a definite “shift” happening right now in our world! This book highlights the importance of using one’s platform to improve and impact lives—a form of “Active Activism” rather than “Reactive Activism”. All Ethics Book Club selections can be found at mnnurses.org/bookclub
September 15 Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America by William H. Colby (2006) “Unplugged” addresses the fundamental questions of the right-to-die debate and discusses how the medical advances that bring so much hope and healing have also helped to create today’s dilemma. This compelling book explores recent high-profile cases, including that of Mrs. Schiavo, and illuminates the complex legal, ethical, medical, and deeply personal issues of a debate that ultimately affects us all. November 17 Charity: The Heroic and Heartbreaking Story of Charity Hospital in Hurricane Katrina by Jim Carrier (2015) First went the power. Then came the water, and for five days, the country’s oldest hospital was under siege. The never-before-told story of the heroic doctors, nurses—and patients—who fought to survive Hurricane Katrina at Charity Hospital in New Orleans. The story traces a remarkable fiveday transformation of an infirm institution, caught in a sea of death and indifference, into an island of care and tenderness.
