Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power To Change Our World

Healthcare journalist DiGregorio (Early: An Intimate History of Premature Birth) credits personal experiences with nurses as the inspiration for this “love letter to nursing’s vast possibilities.” Skillfully weaving together history, current events, and interviews with a diverse group of nurses, DiGregorio argues that the profession arose from the innate human impulse to care for the vulnerable, and that this concern for others could help solve today’s biggest problems if nurses had “the budget, authority, and safety” to do it. Although her subject matter is weighty, DiGregorio employs an engaging, hopeful tone, expertly captured by narrator Ann Marie Gideon. Gideon carefully reads the book’s technical passages and movingly presents powerful examples of community advocacy, such as a husband-and-wife nursing duo who travel to churches to deliver diabetes management tips and a nurse who lobbies school systems to purchase air-quality sensors so children aren’t sent outside when air quality is bad.