Labor Pains

Anyone who has ever been a health care worker or a patient knows that doctors admit you to the hospital, but it’s your nurse that makes sure you get to go home. Now more than ever, the world needs a story that awakens your spirit to the heroic powers of the nursing profession: courage, caring and hope. Most people have no idea of what nurses do to keep you alive, until you need one. Labor Pains offers an inside view into the politics nurses face to give safe patient care. Labor Pains is a game-changing dose of hope that is long overdue.

In a timely tale filled with poignant birth stories, Labor Pains, takes its audience on a road trip of a lifetime. Ride along as, Paige O'Neill RN, an amazing nurse brings babies into the world for a living but can't seem to have another of her own. Paige knows how to relieve the pain of her patients; but, when it comes to her own suffering she relies more and more on alcohol. From the sacred realms of the delivery rooms to the secrets shared in boardrooms, you will see what really goes on behind the doors of a health care Goliath that takes over a small community hospital. Here, management cares more about making money than taking care of patients and conditions for the nurses become too much to bear. Labor Pains is transformation: a new life struggles to unfold; a united purpose grips the nurses and a political movement is born. In many workplaces, nurses just want to do their jobs and go home, but at Mercy Hospital getting involved in nurse protests becomes a necessity. Healthcare is changing. The battle lines between big box brands and patient care have been drawn and nurses can no longer remain neutral. Giving birth is hard, but giving birth to change can be even harder. A whole new meaning to Labor Pains emerges when a labor union organizes the nurses to stick together and make a difference. The nurses learn to push back in order to prevent nursing shortages, health worker burnout and to give birth to the changes needed to keep their profession alive. Labor Pains bring a whole new appreciation for what nurses do for a living and for what nurses are doing to take a stand for the integrity of care they believe in.

Rita Batchley is not your ordinary RN. She is a political activist who believes that nurses hold the key to real healthcare reform. Known as the Nurses' Nurse, she has dedicated her life in support of safe patient care and to uphold the truth that compassion is one of the most important ingredients in medicine.

Since graduating from nursing school, over twenty-five years ago, Nurse Batchley has helped more than 3,000 babies come into the world. Now, in her breakout novel, Labor Pains, she delivers a gripping story that tells the effects of nursing on nurses as only someone with her background can. Rita decided to write a book because there wasn’t much, in terms of media, that demonstrated what it means to be a nurse hero.

After years of pushing to change California laws to protect nurses the inspiration to write Labor Pains was born.