The Comfort Garden: Tales from the Trauma Unit

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

"It's 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 Barkin's 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 family's 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 nation's 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. You'll 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 us

Dettagli