Official Review: Tales of a Male Nurse by Patrick K S Poon

[Sieron1]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Tales from a Male Nurse" by Patrick K S Poon.]

Tales of a Male Nurse by retired nurse Patrick K S Poon is an autobiographical memoir on his life and experiences as a nurse, more specifically a male nurse. The book was an average read, detailing his training, interesting incidents in his nursing life, and finally how the development of UK's nursing policies affected his career. These were given as separate stories or a chapter with a collection of short incidents. However it did not make a lasting impression on my mind which I found slightly disappointing.

The writing style was averagely good at best and mostly tended to be awkward and boring. Especially towards the beginning and end of the book. The description of the background of each story was overly detailed whereas there was just a couple of lines of actual story in the whole chapter.
Also some of these stories were completely unrelated and some of the chapters had no story line involved, especially the ones towards the end which seemed more of a venting of the author's frustration.

Considering that the title goes as 'tales' of a male nurse, it definitely was less than expected. The title puts in mind more interesting anecdotes and amusing or touching situations especially during duty. Also the general reader expects a more extensive description in order to be engrossed.

On the positive side there was a lot of factual information on the general life of a nurse and how the career has evolved through the past forty years. And despite the fact that most of the stories were badly written there were a few rare gems which did bring out the whole theme of the book. The book overall would probably be very useful for a person intending to pursue a career in nursing in the UK or if one is already a nurse by profession. Of course that is not to say that other readers won't be interested. But the reader base that I see in my mind, which will find this most interesting, would be those with a connection to nursing.

Therefore I rate this book a 2 out of 4. It is an interesting book but not one I would feel like rereading.

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