Newest Nurse on the Planet: A Memoir

In Newest Nurse on the Planet, Kristy Polden delivers a brutally honest, wildly funny, and emotionally gut-punching memoir for anyone who has ever wondered if they were cut out for the chaos of healthcare or simply trying to survive a shift with their sanity and scrubs intact. From growing up as an overweight child in the glory days of millennial diet culture, to becoming a nervous teenager who once ghosted an unconscious coworker in distress, to finding herself holding a stranger’s penis with her bare hands on shift, Polden chronicles the good, the bad, and the haunting experiences of nursing life. With sharp wit, unfiltered honesty, and the kind of compassion that sneaks up and punches you directly in the throat, she takes readers through her unbecoming childhood, nursing school, new-nurse panic, bedside heartbreak, awkward patient moments, impossible choices, and the sacred absurdity of showing up for people on the worst days of their lives. Whether she’s navigating the stress of nursing school, where every answer is correct, but only one is the most correct, or accidentally failing to perform the Heimlich because her fight-or-flight response chose freeze, Polden brings an irrev…