A physician celebrates the nursing profession, offering a paean of praise to his countless nurse colleagues, friends, and mentors over almost fifty years of learning, teaching, and practicing at four universities. John’s opening words recall his earliest learning: “Two nurses—one very senior and one very junior—became my first teachers during my apprenticeship in the art and science of caring for those in need.”

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John Graham-Pole is a retired professor of pediatrics. He was a clinician, teacher, and pioneer researcher in the field of childhood cancer for forty years. Educated in Britain, he co-founded Shands Hospital Arts in Medicine (artsinmedicine.ufhealth.org) and the Centre for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida (https://arts.ufl.edu/academics/center-for-arts-in-medicine/), now among the world’s leading arts-and-health organizations. The university has named both a lectureship series in pediatric palliative care and a student scholarship in arts-medicine in his name. He is the author of twelve works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His most recent publications are Songlines, the third in a trilogy of novels inspired by young people with cancer, Healing by Intent, his second medical memoir, and Illness and The Art of Creative Self-Expression, an extensively updated reissue of his 2000 work on creativity as an essential element for our health. He lives in Nova Scotia with his wife, Dorothy Lander, where in 2018 they co-founded HARP: The People’s Press (www.harppublishing.ca), a multimedia publishing house dedicated to exploring how the arts can enhance our individual and communal health. His personal website is www.johngrahampole.com and he can be found on Facebook and Linked-In.

Here’s something new: a doctor’s experiences of working with nurses who became his teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends — and “ministering angels.” Everyone of them was instrumental in the author’s recognition of medicine as both art and science. I much enjoyed reading Grace Notes. John is a fine writer with the power to draw the reader into each scene he describes, to let us see and feel what is happening. Each story comes alive through its vivid historical detail and its use of local dialect — be it West of Scotland or Southern US. This is a memoir that is also an homage to the profession of nursing. These laudatory portraits include many touching moments as well as tense encounters with nurses who were unafraid to speak up and question a doctor’s judgment. John offers this prayer: “We can only hope there will be nurses like the ones portrayed in Grace Notes for us and our loved ones when our time of need comes.” Tilda Shalof, RN Critical Care Nurse, Medical-Surgical ICU, Toronto General Hospital, for 36 years Author of A Nurse’s Story—Life, Death, and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit.