{
  "id": 17203315,
  "title": "How Is Writing Like Nursing?",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/30/how-is-writing-like-nursing",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-10-30T08:34:32.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Literary Hub",
    "slug": "literary-hub",
    "url": "https://lithub.com/how-is-writing-like-nursing/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The journey of a writer once immersed in academic English, transitioning to nursing and then to narrative nonfiction, is a fascinating one. The origin story begins with a shocking incident—a patient's sudden and fatal illness while under a nurse's care. This traumatic event compelled the author to translate her experience into written words, leading to a column that was well received for its unique perspective, that of a nurse. This recognition opened the door to a burgeoning writing career. Despite her academic background, the author found her writing style shifting towards a more straightforward, direct approach when she immersed herself in nursing. The concrete nature of nursing care—ranging from administering medications to attending to patients' physical and emotional needs—provided a stark contrast to the often abstract academic writing she had been used to. As she dealt with the reality of patient deaths, the emotional weight of the job turned her writing into a cathartic process. She sought to convey the job's complexity through simple, direct language, avoiding the unnecessary complication that academic jargon might have introduced. Her academic training, however, did not vanish. Inspired by John Donne's poem \"Death Be Not Proud\" and William Blake's verses, she seamlessly wove literary references into her narrative nonfiction works. Her first book, 'The Shift', for instance, was a testament to her nursing experience, focusing on a single day in a hospital setting and the lives saved and lost within it. This work highlighted the profound impact a nurse can have in a short twelve-hour shift. Initially questioned about her departure from academia, the author firmly maintained that her decision was not regrettable. Instead, she found her true calling in nursing and subsequently in writing about it, which also allowed her to advocate for her beloved profession. The author's journey thus demonstrates how a nurse's daily work, filled with concrete actions and human emotions, can be translated into powerful narratives of life and death, health and healing, and, ultimately, the human condition.",
  "summary": "This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. My writing career began unexpectedly, with a terrible and surprising patient death. I had been a nurse for only a few months, and nothing in school had prepared me for",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}