In The Handover, nurse Tilda Shalof shares her knowledge and vast experience with student nurse, Lisa Mochrie. Their relationship unfolds through conversations, texts, emails, and real-time meetings, that span the COVID-19 pandemic to the present day. As Shalof reflects on what has changed in the profession, she also seeks to identify the universal practices, values, and nursing ethos, that must be preserved. She and Mochrie discuss clinical challenges and personal struggles: from the rigours of nursing school and shift work to the stresses of “adulting,” such as dating, friendships, identity, self-care, and the search for balance. This book offers practical advice and novel perspectives on long-standing issues, such as the meaning of the term nursing shortage and how to combat the pervasive problem of burnout. It explores compassion fatigue, emotional intelligence, boundary-setting, bias and privilege awareness, and the aspiration to provide person-centered care. The Handover is a candid, often humorous, and deeply intimate look into the world of nursing, which is too often overlooked by the media or regarded through overly sentimental stereotypes. Accessible to all readers and invaluable to students and educators, this book will stimulate critical conversations about what it means to care for others and oneself and how to repair our precious, but precarious, health care system.
