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4 out of 4 stars
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Nurse Jack is a memoir of Jack S. Houston’s career as a registered nurse (RN) in different professional capacities. This book offers the public a peek into the world of medical professionals; it educates the public about common misconceptions and stereotypes about some medical conditions and medical professionals. It also offers a glimpse into some unspoken occurrences in hospitals. It does all of these from the perspective of a professional nurse, Jack Houston. This book contains a compilation of pieces of memorable events experienced over the author’s professional career, and it effectively executes the job of presenting a different perspective to the reader.
The author, Jack S. Houston, shares thirty-five anecdotes in this book. In one of the anecdotes titled “I am not Gay,” Jack shared how he navigated his early professional life as a male nurse in a time when nursing was not considered a professional option for most men. This ensured that patients developed various stereotypes about male nurses, depending on their gender. However, unlike the male nurses, male doctors tended to get a free pass, earning the full trust of patients. Why is there such a double standard? The book suggests an answer based on Jack’s and his male nurse colleagues’ brilliant response to this tricky situation.
This book reveals that one of the occupational hazards nurses face is the risk of being harassed by patients while on duty, an experience Jack had along with many others. As it turns out, the term “dirty old man,” used by female nurses to describe inappropriate old male patients, can be flipped when male nurses are involved. The phrase “dirty old women” is just as appropriate for referring to inappropriate female patients. This and many more can be read about in this beautifully written book.
Jack makes the book particularly fascinating to read as it sheds light on rarely imagined or known occurrences in one of our society’s most hallowed professions and educates the reader on some medical terms, conditions, and processes. One interesting lesson I learned was about cross-contamination as it applies to gonorrhoea. If a man touches a woman’s genitals while she has gonorrhoea, he will become infected if he were to wipe his eye with the same hand. An excellent medical tip I learned is that lidocaine is effective for numbing an open wound area; it also constricts the blood vessels, thereby decreasing some bleeding.
This book is hard to put down, and if you do manage to do so successfully, you are bound to eventually return to pick it up and continue reading. The author tells the story in layman’s terms and manages to use good grammar and punctuation to pass his message across. I found no grammatical or punctuation errors. It provides inexperienced readers with a good understanding of the unadvertised happenings in the medical professions; hence, I recommend this book to all fiction and non-fiction lovers alike. I particularly recommend this book to people who love books that have medical content. I should clarify that it is non-fiction; however, some of the stories are so unbelievable that you would think they are fictional. It has earned a rating of 4 out of 4 stars from me because I could not find a single fault with it.
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Nurse Jack
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