All book club meetings will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
January, September, November book clubs will be held online.
March and May book clubs will be held at the MNA Office.
- Thursday, January 19: Everybody Just Breathe: A COVID Nurse Memoir of Stamina and Swear Words by Amanda Peterson, RN, BSN, CCRN (2022)
Amanda Peterson is an ICU RN working for United Hospital, she is a third-generation healthcare worker, she is a member of Minnesota Nurses Association AND she is planning to attend the Ethics Book Club when her book, Everybody Just Breathe, is featured on January 19, 2023. For nearly a year, Amanda worked in COVID ICU where every patient every day was admitted with the same diagnosis as they began their own agonizing fight for breath. This book is a testament to patients and a love letter of camaraderie to fellow COVID nurses. (2.0 contact hours) - Thursday, March 16: Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient by Theresa Brown, RN (author of “The Shift”) (2022)
Despite years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care. Her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. (2.0 contact hours) - Thursday, May 18: For the Good of Mankind? The Shameful History of Human Medical Experimentation by Vicki O. Wittenstein (2013)
Take a journey through some of history’s greatest medical advances—and its most horrifying medical atrocities. Through these stories, explore the human suffering that has gone hand in hand with medical advancement. (2.0 contact hours) - Thursday, September 21: Saving Lives: Why the Media’s Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers (2015)
Saving Lives exposes the media’s role in the nursing shortage and the often dismissive public perception of nursing. Nurses are the difference between life and death, self-sufficiency and dependency, and hope and despair. Nonetheless a lack of appreciation for nursing has contributed to a global shortage that is one of our most urgent public health crises. Saving Lives is destined to change public perceptions, thereby empowering nurses and attracting new nurses to the healthcare field. (2.0 contact hours) - Thursday, November 16: The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee (2021)
Racism is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? This is the story of how public goods in this country have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. (2.0 contact hours)