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Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers

Stories from the Tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers by Marianna Crane
She Writes Press, 2018. ISBN 978-1-631-52445-5
Reviewed by Mary Potter Kenyon
Posted on: November 20, 2018
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Readers of Stories from the tenth-Floor Clinic: A Nurse Practitioner Remembers will get a peek into the early 1980s, before gerontology was an established specialty in medicine and social services. An eye-opening read, especially for those of us not in the medical profession.

The author did the best she could as a nurse practitioner at the time, and sometimes her best fell short, with limited time and resources at her disposal. It is difficult to imagine a nurse running a senior clinic on her own, but Crane did an excellent job and seemed to be her own worst critic. I found her stories interesting and insighful. That said, it was somewhat disconcerting when each chapter ended with a sentence that promised a suspense that was not warranted for the topic. Still, a good read, and I imagine anyone in the nursing profession would find it fascinating.

Marianna Crane became one of the first gerontological nurse practitioners in the early 1980s. A nurse for more than forty years, she has worked in hospitals, clinics, home care, and hospice settings. She writes to educate the public about what nurses really do. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Eno River Literary Journal, Examined Life Journal, Hospital Drive, Stories That Need to be Told: A Tulip Tree Anthology, and Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine. She lives with her husband in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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