By Alan Briskin, PhD, and Jan Boller, RN, PhD

How do caring and compassion show up in the demanding, often chaotic experience of health care practice? This book, in full-color and supported by magnificent photography, seeks to answer that question and put caring and compassion back at the center of excellent health care in spite of the time-pressured, cost-conscious, high-tech focus of modern health care.

Authors Alan Briskin and Jan Boller met with 20 registered nurses for a sustained dialogue at a California community hospital to work toward an answer to this very question. Telling stories and discussing key principles of caring, the group engaged in conversations that revealed the inner landscape of both caring and caretaker. Using principles of appreciative inquiry, reflective practice, generative dialogue, and the power of speaking in circle, the work was an affirmation that when people are ill, they need a team to care for them. Likewise, caregivers need to be part of a group that cares together. Illustrated with original photography by one of the authors, the book has a beauty and spaciousness that is reflective of the book's message and perfect for anyone who wishes to experience relationship-centered care as a lived experience.

"Daily Miracles is more than a miracle. It is a glowing product of vision, perseverance, courage, devotion, and art." (Linda Hawes Clever, MD)

"This amazing little book of artistic visual beauty and photography carries within it secret stories of miracles—the inside beauty of nursing and the inner life of caring. What a gift of grace and mercy to nurses and others who experience daily miracles of humanity. This work of Briskin and Boller extends their earlier writings into visual and poetic experiential domains, reminding us of our daily miracles that are often hidden behind the scenes. This book is a gift of love, light, and beauty in what may otherwise be institutional darkness. Daily Miracles makes any theory of human caring come to life." (Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-bc, FAAN)

Click here to view sample pages of the book.

2007 AJN Book of the Year award winner by the American Journal of Nursing.