A Call to Nursing : Nurses' Stories about Challenge and Commitment

What leads a person to become a nurse? And what makes some decide to stay and others to leave?

Hear from twenty-five nurses—from hospitals, private practices, and in home health care—about why they became nurses and why some have walked away.

Edited and introduced by two experts in the field, who speak from two sides of the same coin. One is still in practice, and the other has left the field. A Call to Nursing is a resource for nurses, those considering the field, and anyone who wants to understand what makes a nurse tick.

Paula Sergi, BSN, MFA, was selected by the Hessen Literary Society as the Wisconsin writer to act as the 2005 Cultural Ambassador for the Hessen-Wisconsin Writers Exchange. She is the author of Family Business, a collection of poems, and she co-edited Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation, University of Iowa Press, 1999. Sergi received a Wisconsin Arts Board Artist Fellowship in 2001. Her poetry is published regularly in such journals as The Bellevue Literary Review, Primavera, Crab Orchard Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review and her writing has been featured recently in the American Journal of Nursing. She worked as a staff nurse at University of Wisconsin Hospitals, as a public health nurse with various county departments, and as a visiting nurse in Portland, Oregon. Now she focuses her time as a teacher and writer. She teaches creative writing at Ripon College, and lives in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Geraldine Gorman, RN, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds an M.A. in English Literature and a Ph.D. in Nursing, both from Loyola University, Chicago. Before coming to UIC in 2002, she taught at Western Michigan University. Prior to entering the nursing profession in 1991, she taught writing as a teaching assistant at Loyola University. She also worked in direct social services, living in community at the Little Brothers of the Poor and participating in all aspects of their service to low-income elderly, including meal delivery, relocation services, and holiday and vacation celebrations. In this capacity she also facilitated poetry workshops in nursing homes, resulting in two small anthologies of collected work. She was a founding member of a small grass roots organization in Tempe, AZ, which served the needs of the many relocated elderly and she organized the local university community to provide, among other services, respite care for the spouses of Alzheimer victims. Before beginning nursing school, Gerry served as the volunteer coordinator and editorial assistant to H.O.M.E, a nonprofit housing organization for Chicago’s low-income elderly.