HEALING HEALTHCARE

Weinstein and Readinger take a look at problems facing healthcare professionals and suggest ways to fix them.

The authors make it clear from the first line of the introduction that American health care, as it stands right now, is a problem. “We talk a lot about the pandemic and the impact of its aftermath on our healthcare system,” they write. “But our system, although revered as one of the best in the world, has been broken for much longer than three years.” What follows is a blueprint to fix this system, developed using a protocol called Diagnostic Thinking that included one-on-one and group interviews with nurses who pinpointed issues in the health care industry. Those interviews led to the three sections of the book: “Workforce,” addressing problems finding qualified nurses; “Well-Being,” a discussion about taking care of nurses in the workplace; and “Wisdom,” which outlines ideas for accomplishing these goals. Chapters in these sections include topics such as “Creating a Culture of Emotional Safety in Healthcare,” “Inspiring Gen Z to Stay,” “Frontline Nurses…Experiencing Well-Being,” and “Unleashing the Power of Nurses.” The final chapter, “From Ideation to Reality,” is written by Weinstein, a nurse, and includes bulleted ideas (give nurses a voice; promote nurse health; identify needs and solve one problem at a time) that could serve as a call to action for health care leaders. This book isn’t for a general audience—it’s specifically geared toward nurses and other health care professionals and is chock-full of supporting evidence regarding the problems that need to be tackled within the nursing workforce. The text is well-organized and the methodology is spelled out in full, but this is much more an expanded research paper (including 20 pages of endnotes) than it is a highly readable look at the health care industry. But that isn’t what the authors were after—they want to shine a light on some serious problems, and this book certainly does that. It also serves up some answers and suggestions for a way forward to a healthier health care system.

A book for health care professionals packed with information to improve the embattled industry.