Seldom do we run across a book about career options for people with disabilities that is as readable as Leave No Nurse Behind: Nurses Working with disAbilities. This is a paperback that does many things, and all of them well. It should be required reading for nursing students, nurses, administrators and instructors. The insight it provides could easily be applied to disability employment issues at other jobs.
Don’t skip the opening parable and introduction by the author. How is living with a disability like moving to Florida? You’ll always remember after reading the charming, sensical story modeled after a message that appeared originally in a Dear Abby column. Dr. Maheady writes about disability jobs to a mass audience while making her words seem as though they are a personal web of support and encouragement aimed at the reader alone.
The following 12 chapters are each penned by a different author, but they flow seamlessly. A combination of engaging writers and good editing have combined to produce an informative guide to disability employment that is hard to put down.
ADA and Nursing
Chapter One covers legal accommodations mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as well as circumstances where protection is not granted, and why. Although the subject is dry, layman’s terms bring the legal language of the act down to a level that can be understood by anyone, and examples help clarify with real-world situations.
People with Disabilities on the Job
T hat information out of the way, Maheady then gives the reader a string of rewards: 11 autobiographical stories told by nurses with disabilities who have made it through trials and tribulations on the job, often with humor and always with compassion. Their disabilities range from HIV to multiple sclerosis (MS), but they all have encountered, and surmounted, tough obstacles in their career.
Each narrative is first-person. Many times in other books the result is uneven storytelling that suffers because of poor writing in places. After all, these people are nurses and other professionals, not writers. But you will devour every chapter of Leave No Nurse Behind and be left wanting more.
Personal Disabilty Job Stories
Take Susan, the nurse who has one hand that does the work of two. She grew up in a supportive family, had her ups and downs at school – including an incident with a teacher that left her too upset to return to class – and then fought to be accepted at nursing school. One administrator admonished her for being a potential danger to patients, yet she recounts the day years into her career when, after another nurse fled a crashing patient, Susan went to his side and calmly saved his life.
Cynthia wanted to be a neurosurgeon, but was discouraged by her high school counselor because she’s a woman. Embarking on what was to become a very successful nursing career, Cynthia had some bumps settling in. However, things were going well before she helped transfer a patient and heard popping coming from her back. The rest of her story details her struggle to continue nursing while taking care of her chronic back pain, and the revelation that some of the best nurses don’t work directly with patients.
Nursing Career Extras
At the end of every chapter are a few nuggets of “workable wisdom,” or the key points that can be gleaned from that nurse’s story. This real-life advice from someone else’s experience while employed with a disability provides key information for making your own path easier, and it’s succinct enough to stick.
In the final chapter, Dr. Maheady provides “future planning,” a compendium of tips and suggestions for living with a disability on the job. Three practical appendices round out the book: a sample accommodation request letter, disclosure of a psychiatric disability and dealing with a difficult boss, followed by a comprehensive list of resources.
Read this book yourself, then donate a copy to your nursing school or place of employment. This is exactly the kind of enlightenment about disability employment that needs to be spread.
Author Donna Maheady, ARNP, EdD, has also written a companion volume titled Nursing Students with Disabilities – Change the Course, in addition to conceptualizing and running a related website at ExceptionalNurse.com.
Leave No Nurse Behind: Nurses Working with disAbilities by Donna Carol Maheady, ARNP, EdD. Published by iUniverse, 2006. 121 pp. ISBN 978-0-595-39649-8
