I believe that literature by and about nurses can answer the need for an inner life and provide us with other ways of knowing -- apart from scientific knowledge. As an educator I know that preparing students for nursing involves more than classroom and clinical instruction. It entails cultivation of the inner life, so poorly tended in contemporary culture.

New Nursing Anthologies
edited by Paula Sergi and Geraldine Gorman

Meditations on Hope: Nurses’ Stories about Motivation and Inspiration” Kaplan Publishing.

From the introduction: “Hope is an elusive promise—difficult to define, to contain, to make good on. No wonder Emily Dickinson imagined hope to be “the thing with feathers.” Just when we think we have it caged, it soars from sight.”

So many people want to know how nurses do it, stay positive and focused and maintain hope in the face of patients' suffering. This book explores experiences that have brought nurses understanding and healing. Nurses step outside the clinical environment to share these experiences. The stories provide a window into the hearts and minds of the people who care for us every day.

A Call to Nursing: Stories about Challenge and Commitment

As a practice profession, nursing abounds with experiences that can either reinforce our vocational commitment or render it void. It is not uncommon, especially in early stages, to be well acquainted with both such reactions, sometimes in the course of a single day. How we face such moments, whether we dig in or step aside, determines not only the trajectory of our lives but the tapestry of the profession.
This collection gathers responses from nurses in all phases of their careers—past and present—who stood within such moments and emerged from them with new understanding.

Look for A Call to Nursing in Spring, 2009, from Kaplan Publishing

Review as appears in New York Times Science Section on REFLECTIONS ON DOCTORS.

<Click for New York Times article>

Thursday, April 27 Reading and book signing

Society for the Arts in Health Care 15th Annual International Conference
“Charting the Course of Arts, Health and Medicine”
April 26 – 29, 2006, Chicago , IL

Saturday, May 5, 2006 Reading and book signing

Nurse-poet Paula Wettstein Sergi, BS’75, will return to Madison to present her poetry at NAO’s Alumni Day Celebration. At 9:30 AM she will read from her work published in The Poetry of Nursing, a compilation of poems and commentaries (Kent State University Press). Fluno Center,
601 University Avenue, University of Wisconsin, Madison Campus.
From Nurses’ Alumni Organization Newsletter, Spring, 2006.

January, 2006

Paula Sergi contributes chapter to The Poetry Of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse Poets, edited by Judy Schaefer, Kent State University Press, January, 2006, ISBN: 0-87338-848-8.

The Poetry of Nursing: Poems and Commentaries of Leading Nurse-Poets

So much written about literature and medicine has been from the perspective of physicians. But in the last few years nurses have found their voices and are making important contributions to the field of biomedical and nursing humanities. These men and women professionals see different things and experience patients and health care issues in different contexts.

Judy Schaeffer has compiled this anthology of contemporary nurse-poets’ work, which is accompanied by their commentaries about their poetry, their work, and their lives. She has gathered contributions from some of the best-known nurse-poets as well as from those who deserve to be. The Poetry of Nursing will add significantly to the ever-growing body of literature that connects medicine, nursing, and the humanities.