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Comments by Pat Carroll on the Center's review of "What Nurses Know and Doctors Don't Have Time to Tell You"


Thank you for the thoughtful feedback on my book. As I have learned during the process of writing this book, there are compromises that need to be made (such as the length) and cover art and titles that are not completely in the control of the author when working with a major publishing company such as Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Your comment on the use of the caduceus as an icon to identify nursing research summarizes a case in point. I'm sure you would have shared my horror when the pages came back from the designers with (gasp) an icon of a female with a "That Girl" hairdo and a cap to identify nursing research. The caduceus was the best they could come up with when time was tight and cost of art was a factor, and it was certainly less offensive than the initial art.

Similarly, the title came about through a series of discussions and compromises. I think it is important to remember there are means to an end. The publisher's publicist says she has not gotten interest in a general health title like this in at least a year. The book has already been mentioned in Publisher's Weekly and Self magazine, and it will be in Reader's Digest and Health magazine in September 2004. The New York Daily News has bought rights to reprint 12 excerpts over the next 4 months and the book has been selected by four major book clubs as an alternate selection.

Every interview I have had so far has started off with comments by the interviewer about the health care system being in a mess and how nurses are the backbone holding it together. "What doctors don't have time to tell you" has opened many doors and established a commonality of experiences that is getting me the interview opportunities in which I can talk about nursing and my incredibly positive personal experiences of being a nurse.

This book needs to be a commercial success in order for me to have a chance at another book and to have additional media opportunities to talk about nursing. Unless I self-published, compromises are a fact of life in the book business. If this book is successful, my fervent hope is that it will open doors for my nursing colleagues to write trade books as well.

See Pat Carroll's web site www.whatnursesknow.com. To buy the book, click here.

Go back to the Center's review of "What Nurses Know and Doctors Don't Have Time to Tell You."

 

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