Journeys with God
by Marilyn D. Harris MSN, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN
I got to know Marilyn when she approached me about helping her with the publication of this book. She is the older version of that no-nonsense caring nurse that everyone would love to have minister to them whenever they have a physical ailment. As I worked on her book and got to know her more – both through our periodic meetings and through my reading and re-reading her devotions and memories – I came to appreciate her even more. This book illustrates her true self – snippets of thoughts she had during various life experiences and longer ones of her memories of her family.
Read it carefully. Absorb one devotion or one memory at a time. Savor them and get to know both Marilyn and her God through them. You’ll be glad you did.
~Allan Russell
Faith Community Nursing: An International Specialty Practice Changing the Understanding of Health
by P. Ann Solari-Twadell and Deborah Jean Ziebarth
A multi-authored book, with editors and authors who are leaders in Faith Community Nursing (FCN) that aims to address contemporary issues in faith-based, whole person, community based health offering cost effective, accessible, patient centered care along the patient continuum while challenging contemporary health policy to include more health promotion services.
Twenty-five chapters take the reader from a foundational understanding of this historic grass-roots movement to the present day international specialty nursing practice. The book is structured into five sections that describe both the historical advancement of the Faith Community Nursing, its current implications and future challenges, taking into account the perspectives of the pastor, congregation, nurse, health care system and public health national and international organizations.
The benefits of this book are that it is intended for a mixed audience including lay, academic, medical professionals or health care executives. By changing the mindset of the reader to see the nurse as more than providing illness care, the faith community as more than a place one goes to on Sunday and health as more than physical, creative alternatives for promoting health emerge through Faith Community Nursing.
Faith Community Nursing: Developing a Quality Practice (American Nurses Association)
by Carol J. Smucker
An authoritative, balanced, in-depth guide to faith community nursing practice that describes the daily challenges and realities of working in a faith community setting, emphasizing both spiritual care for oneself as well as for one’s patients and how one’s spiritual health can be a force for dealing with physical illness. Organized as a quick reference for the busy faith community nurse, this book includes the most basic information for beginning, developing, and maintaining a quality health ministry program in a faith community or faith community based agency. In the book, the authors describe their personal experiences working in Christian and Jewish Congregational settings to emphasize the variety of faith community settings, types of positions, and the diverse educational backgrounds of faith community nurses. Grounded in ANA’s Faith Community Nursing: Scope & Standards of Practice, this new book provides suggestions, guidelines and examples of how to integrate oneself into this new role and setting as well as solutions for the predictable issues that may arise in one’s own faith community work.
Fast Facts for the Faith Community Nurse: Implementing FCN/Parish Nursing in a Nutshell
by Janet Hickman MS EdD RN
Hickman has developed a great resource for nurses practicing in a faith community or who want to implement a program… This is an easy-to-use tool offering quick access to good information and insights for FCN practice.” –Journal of Christian Nursing
The book explains how to assess a faith community and design, implement, and evaluate nursing programs that meet the needs of its different populations across the life span. It explores various faith community nursing models along with their legal and ethical considerations, and the different roles available for faith community nurses. Meeting special needs within faith communities (acute care, chronic care, palliative care, grief, and loss) is addressed, as is serving its wide variety of vulnerable populations (elderly, impoverished, etc.). The foundations and practice of faith community nursing are also presented within the context of different faiths, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Ideal in a clinical setting, this book will also be of value as a quick refresher for certifying as a faith community nurse.
The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents―and Ourselves―from the Perils of Modern Healthcare
by Marcy Cottrell Houle M.S., Elizabeth Eckstrom M.D. M.P.H., et al.
“I just finished reading a book that I think is a good resource for caregivers of elderly parents. It is The Gift of Caring: Saving our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare by Marcy Cottrell Houle and Elizabeth Eckstrom. Dr. Eckstrom was quoted in an article in Sunday’s StarTribune about the shortage of geriatricians. The book alternates first person experiences by Marcy Cottrell Houle, who had care-giving journeys with both parents, with Dr. Eckstrom’s commentary about what is needed at each of the care-giving stages.”
– Marjorie A. Schaffer, PhD, RN, University Professor of Nursing Emerita, Bethel University
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, and Chicago Tribune, now in paperback with a new reading group guide
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures-in his own practices as well as others’-as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life-all the way to the very end.
A Book of Prayers
by Arthur A. R. Nelson.
“This book is helpful to keep handy because it has prayers for almost any occasion. If you don’t have it yet, I surely recommend you pick one up!”
-Jessica Drecktrah, MHA, MN, RN, FCN