I've been writing my whole life. I've been a nurse for 30 years. Stork Writer is where the two meet.
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I can't tell you how many times I've pulled up a chair next to a patient's bed.
Often it's a mother sent over for an induction. Nobody has told her that getting her body ready for labor can take a day or two before the induction itself starts. She's anxious, and the unknowns are the hardest part. So I sit down and walk her through it. By the end, she's calmer.
That kind of teaching takes time, and busy units run on tight schedules. I always wanted more time to teach. Writing gives me that time, and it lets me reach far more people than one bedside ever could.
People have told me for years that I should write a book.
In 2004, my oldest son was paralyzed in a diving accident on his high school graduation day. I knew nothing about spinal cord injuries, and I had to learn fast. My cousin set up a blog for me, paulspath.com, and I wrote every day. I explained what was happening medically and what each day felt like. I did the same when my mother went through cancer.
That's where I learned what good health writing does. It gives people the facts, and it doesn't leave them alone with those facts.
NEED FROM JEAN: confirm she's comfortable sharing the details about her son and her mother
I spent 24 years at one Magnet-recognized hospital, most of it in labor and delivery, with time in postpartum and the nursery. For the past three years I've worked as a travel nurse across New York State:
Helping reopen a rural labor and delivery unit and training its new nurses
A smaller community hospital
A larger hospital in Syracuse
Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York City
A Binghamton unit that delivers about 300 babies a month
Every hospital does the same task a little differently. That range, and years of explaining things to families from many backgrounds, often through an interpreter, is what I bring to your content.
An interview-based video for my hospital's unit.
Made during COVID when in-person tours stopped. Viewed more than 2,000 times, and still used by the hospital.
Years of daily writing through my son's recovery and my mother's illness.
Taken and edited for parents after the loss of their baby, so they would have them in time for the service. That work taught me how to write about loss with care and without clichés.
Registered Nurse (RN) · Member, Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) · BLS · ACLS · NRP · Advanced Fetal Monitoring · S.T.A.B.L.E.
NEED FROM JEAN: confirm Advanced Fetal Monitoring wording and any specialty certification (e.g., RNC-OB)I live in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, about halfway down the west side of Canandaigua Lake. I'm a mother and a grandmother.
NEED FROM JEAN: one or two personal details
Once I have a mission, look out. Tell me about yours.
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