Suzanne Gordon is an American journalist and author who writes about healthcare delivery and
health care systems and
patient safety and
nursing.[1] Gordon coined the term "Team Intelligence," to describe the constellation of skills and knowledge needed to build the kind of teams upon which
patient safety depends.[2][3] Her work includes, First Do Less Harm: Confronting the Inconvenient Problems of Patient Safety (Cornell University Press, 2012), a collection of essays edited with
Ross Koppel[4] and Beyond the Checklist: What Else Health Care Can Learn from Aviation Safety and Teamwork (
Cornell University Press, 2012), written with commercial pilot Patrick Mendenhall and medical educator Bonnie Blair O’Connor, with a foreword by
Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger.[4]
It also includes books about nursing's contribution to health care including Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines,[4] and Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care.[4] With Bernice Buresh, she is author of From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public, which is in its third edition.[4] Along with Sioban Nelson, she co-edits The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work Series at
Cornell University Press.[4]
She got her first job in journalism in 1970 at
United Press International.[15] She also helped found and write for Women: A Journal of Liberation, one of the first
feminist journals in the US.[16]
Career
For the first part of her career she wrote largely about political culture and women's issues, writing Lonely in America (1996), a journalistic account of loneliness as a mass
social problem in
American society.[17] She also wrote a widely reviewed expose of ballet as work – Off Balance: The Real World of Ballet.[18][19] The book challenged the myth that everything is beautiful at the ballet.[20][21]
Gordon began writing about healthcare after she had her first baby at a small community hospital outside of
Boston.
Socialized like so many others, only to focus on the role of physicians in healthcare, she was surprised to discover the importance of
nurses in monitoring and managing her labor and delivery, making sure she and her baby were safe, and helping her to cope with her post-labor problems and learn how to take care of her baby.[citation needed] She wrote her first article on nursing, "The Crisis in Caring" for the
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine.[22] She then spent three years at the
Beth Israel Hospital in
Boston, following three nurses for her book Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines.[citation needed]
When
President Clinton launched his failed health care initiative, which launched the era of
managed care, Gordon began to journalistically document the impact of managed care on patients and
caregivers alike. Her book Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost-Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nursing and Patient Care explored the problems of for-profit driven
managed care.[citation needed]
In 2000, with the publication of the paperback version of Dana Beth Weinberg's Code Green, for which she wrote a foreword,[23] Gordon and her colleagues Fran Benson and Sioban Nelson, launched the Culture and Politics of Health Care Work Series at
Cornell University Press which has published 30 titles on healthcare.[4]
In the mid 2000 Gordon began to focus more on patient safety. Concerned about the parlous state of physician/nurse communication, she wrote the play Bedside Manners, with playwright Lisa Hayes in 2013.[citation needed]
Awards
American Journal of Nursing. 2000 Book of the Year Award. From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public.[24]
Nursing in the Media Award. Registered Nurses Association of Ontario. 2001.[25]
2005 Golden Lamp Award for the Best Media Depiction of Nursing (Center for Nursing Advocacy) for Nursing against the Odds[citation needed]
Winner of the 2006 Golden Lamp Award for Best Media on How Nurses Present Themselves to the Public for The Complexities of Care[4]
Winner of the 2006 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards (Community/Public Health, Professional Development and Issues, History and Public Policy) for The Complexities of Care[citation needed]
Book of the Year Award. American Journal of Nursing for Safety in Numbers, 2008.[26]
First-place Winner of the 2009 AJN Book of the Year Awards (Leadership and Management, Public Interest and Creative Works) for Safety in Numbers[4]
Buresh, Bernice and Gordon, Suzanne. From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public. Ottawa:
Canadian Nurses Association, third edition 2013.
ISBN978-0801478734
Gordon, Suzanne. Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care.
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2005.
ISBN978-0-8014-3976-6
Gordon, Suzanne, Feldman, David L. Leonard, Michael. Editors, Collaborative Caring: Stories and Reflections on Teamwork in Health Care.
Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2014
^"Archived copy"(PDF). www.businessinnovationfactory.com. Archived from
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