The Nightingale Gene

The first in a trilogy highlighting caregiving as a demanding, yet rewarding, profession that forces work-life imbalance, The Nightingale Gene provides lessons for those who make caring for others a priority over taking care of themselves.
By the year 2020, the United States will experience a shortage of more than 1 million nurses as baby boomers in the profession retire and hospitals struggle to keep up with supply and demand as the boomer-aging population stresses the already overtaxed staff. Nurses account for more than 75% of the employees in a hospital, but new nurses continue to seek other less stressful careers, remaining in their positions an average of only 6 months, citing poor management and burnout as reasons for leaving. The profession gives nurses both high reward and intense stress. The demand to find, train, and retain quality staff has never been more urgent than now.


The Nightingale Gene provides nurses and healthcare leaders with lessons that address the obvious recruiting and retention demands they face today, focusing first on their own issues and then trickling down to staff. Jayne Van Brunt addresses why nurses and healthcare leaders are wired to hover over everyone else while ignoring their own desires, featuring themes of self-help, self-love, and forgiveness while presenting an easy formula to implement and intentional work-life plan to make nursing and other caregiving professions rewarding again. Written in lyrical fashion, The Nightingale Gene tells the story of one woman's transformational journey and the lessons she learned along her way back to living in balance.