9780984496501_

The Comfort Garden: Tales from the Trauma Unit
Fresh Pond Press

True and Fast-Paced Stories of Life on the Surgical-Trauma Unit at a City Hospital

"Its not the Ritz but this is the best place in the city for treating trauma. The nurses and doctors here are trauma experts. This is where I would want my relatives to be," Laurie Barkin tells upset visitors at San Francisco General Hospital who are waiting to find out what happened to their relatives who were among the 14 people killed or wounded in the law office at 101 California Street. The gunman was a disgruntled client toting two semi-automatic weapons and 250 rounds of ammunition.

After the surgeons had stitched them up, it was Barkins job to help survivors cope with the emotional and psychological reactions to trauma. Barkin, a psychiatric nurse consultant, sees her work as based on the theory that the quicker trauma patients can begin to process painful events by talking about what happened to them, the soon they will begin to recover.

The true stories in The Comfort Garden: Tales from the Trauma Unit recreate the fast-pace of work with patients in the surgical trauma unit at a busy urban hospital. Further complicating the picture is the astounding number of patients with histories of untreated childhood trauma.

After weeks on the ICU, Keith, a middle-aged drug abuser, finds himself clean and sober for the first time in 36 years. When asked about his familys history of depression, he remembers playing in the playground of his housing project when his mother jumped from the 12th floor and landed in front of him.
At 11, Shalimar ran away from home and was befriended by a pimp. Five years later, when she told him she was leaving to get married, he shot her in the back, severing her spinal cord.
A lifetime of trauma began for Gina when she was brutalized while growing up in orphanages. She landed in the trauma unit after falling from the roof of a building. Yet, she exhibits unusual resilience in coping with what life has handed her.

In these intimate stories, readers will come to know vivid characters who test the splintering fringes of the nations safety net. They will begin to feel what police, firefighters, emergency room personnel, and psych nurses feel soon after the headlines subside. And they will understand why people working with trauma victims need support to do the work they do.

The Comfort Garden is a metaphor for the emotional support caregivers need. The story illuminates the issues of compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma that may develop in caregivers when exposure to tragedy becomes routine.

This book will appeal to healthcare professionals, firefighters, police, war veterans, social workers, journalists, students, teachers, public defenders, judges, and anyone whose life is touched by trauma.

"The Comfort Garden reveals the real world of human-to-human caring at its highest level." -- Jean Watson, RN, PhD, author of Human Caring Science: A Theory of Nursing

"Laurie is that rare health professional with a gift for narrative and a story to tell. This is an important book for any health care worker, but especially for those of us who consider ourselves traumatic stress specialists. It reinforces the values and the spirit that brought us into the field. It reminds us of the obstacles we face every day: human cruelty, social injustice, dwindling resources. Read this. Youll be better for it." -- Frank M Ochberg MD, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Michigan State University

"In an age when hospitals have been turning to quicker-acting medications, faster discharges, and fewer deep and meaningful conversations with patients, Laurie Barkin takes the opposite position. She urges us to make the time to use our knowledge of psychodynamic psychotherapy to help traumatized people early in the course of their distress." -- Lenore Terr MD, psychiatrist

"How permeable the line is between the cared for and the caregiver." -- Cortney Davis,The Hearts Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing

"Laurie Barkin has given nurses and other caregivers a story that is at once moving, instructive, poignant, masterfully written, and an apt description of the effects of trauma not only on those who suffer it, but those who care for them.

"The Comfort Garden" is a jewel of a book by a nurse whose caring, compassion and keen introspection are evident in every page, infusing the narrative with a deeply moving personal story to which many nurses--from psychiatry to Med-Surg--will no doubt relate." -- Keith Carson, RN, The Digital Doorway

"The Comfort Garden is about the plight of people who have survived staggering trauma long enough to get to a hospital. The real-life stories unfold to highlight the astonishing impact of trauma on patients, family members, friends, and the caregivers who treat them.

"The writing skillfully draws you to the bedside, has you sit with the rawness of the experience of loved ones, and provides a chance to listen in on the conversations about life and death that are common to the way of life on a trauma unit.

"One cannot walk away from this book without being transformed by its content. As the providers from the trauma unit often say, and as she has been able to richly articulate, "It is as real as it gets..." -- Geoffry Phillips McEnany, PhD, APRN, BC Professor of Nursing, University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Psychiatric/Mental Health Clinical Nurse Specialist in Boston.

(*_*)9780984496501_

The Comfort Garden: Tales from the Trauma Unit
Fresh Pond Press

True and Fast-Paced Stories of Life on the Surgical-Trauma Unit at a City Hospital

After weeks on the ICU, Keith, a middle-aged drug abuser, finds himself clean and sober for the first time in 36 years. When asked about his familys history of depression, he remembers playing in the playground of his housing project when his mother jumped from the 12th floor and landed in front of him.
At 11, Shalimar ran away from home and was befriended by a pimp. Five years later, when she told him she was leaving to get married, he shot her in the back, severing her spinal cord.
A lifetime of trauma began for Gina when she was brutalized while growing up in orphanages. She landed in the trauma unit after falling from the roof of a building. Yet, she exhibits unusual resilience in coping with what life has handed her.

"The Comfort Garden reveals the real world of human-to-human caring at its highest level." -- Jean Watson, RN, PhD, author of Human Caring Science: A Theory of Nursing

"How permeable the line is between the cared for and the caregiver." -- Cortney Davis,The Hearts Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing

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Fresh Pond Press