From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public

As nurses face the ongoing challenges of an increasing need for their services combined with economic pressures, members of the largest profession in health care must become more visible, vocal, and influential. The first communication guidebook designed expressly for nurses, From Silence to Voice helps nurses understand and overcome the self-silencing that often leads RNs to downplay their own expertise and their contributions to the care of the sick and the health of the public. Bernice Buresh and Suzanne Gordon teach nurses, nurse educators, and nurse researchers critical skills they can use to explain their work to other health-care professionals, journalists, policymakers, and political representatives.

From Silence to Voice features stories about nurses who ensure that patients receive appropriate, timely, and even life-saving care, nurses who make all the difference while crises are underway but whose contributions are neglected in medical charts and thank-you notes, nurses who are left out altogether or obscured by the generic "nurse." However, the book also provides detailed accounts of nurses who do make their voices heard, who do make their concerns public— and it shows how those successes can be duplicated. Buresh and Gordon draw on real-world examples that will help nurses to

- gain respect for themselves as professionals,

- communicate well with both patients and health-care colleagues,

- understand how the news media work,

- collaborate with public relations professionals,

- write effective letters to the editor and publish op-ed pieces,

- appear on television and radio, and

- promote research on nursing.

Bernice Buresh writes and lectures on health care, nursing and the media. She has been a reporter for the Milwaukee Sentinel, a professor of journalism at Boston University and an adjunct professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. Buresh is president of the Writers' Room of Boston, Inc. which provides affordable workspace for writers.

Suzanne Gordon is an award-winning journalist. She is the author of Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines and co-editor of Caregiving: Readings in Knowledge, Practice, Ethics, and Politics. She is an adjunct professor in the school of nursing at McGill University. Gordon is a health care commentator on Public Radio International's "Marketplace," and a popular lecturer on nursing and health care.