Books & Books and the Sylvester Cancer Center present…

Wake up to a VIRTUAL BREAKFAST WITH HOPE, a monthly reading & discussion group hosted by Hope Torrents and sponsored by Sylvester Cancer Center!

“An engrossing human drama . . . The Shift is one nurse's story, but it contains elements of every nurse's experience."—The Wall Street Journal

Practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse but all the life that happens in just one day on a busy teaching hospital’s cancer ward. In the span of twelve hours, lives can be lost, life-altering treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. Unfolding in real time—under the watchful eyes of this dedicated professional and insightful chronicler of events—The Shift gives an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country. By shift’s end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and humanity.

Theresa Brown, RN, works as a clinical nurse. Her regular column appears on the New York Times opinion pages as well as on the Times Opinionator blog. She has also been a contributor to the popular “Well” section of that paper and writes for CNN.com and other national media. Brown received her BSN from the University of Pittsburgh and, during what she calls her past life, a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. Before becoming a nurse she taught English at Tufts University. Today, her focus is medical oncology and end-of-life issues. She lectures nationally, is a board member of the Center for Health Media and Policy at the Bellevue School of Nursing at Hunter College. Brown was a panelist for the TEDMED's Great Challenges of Health and Medicine initiative and is also involved in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Flip the Clinic" initiative and an advisory board member for Scrubs Magazine. She lives with her husband and three children in Pennsylvania.

Hope Torrents is the Museum Educator and Director of the Fine Art of Healthcare program at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami where she’s worked since 1999. In 2010 her husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Over a six-year period Jordi was in and out of the hospital 45-50 times.

Hope’s own work with The Lowe Art Museum’s Fine Art of Healthcare is one step in preparing future healthcare providers to be better observers and communicators. The goal is for them to have a more holistic view of their patients and families. Hope’s interest in creating a book club on health and well-being was in part propelled by her conviction that, with the right training, those in the medical system can improve – especially in the fields of compassion, visual acuity, de-biasing, and collaboration.

Hope has been facilitating discussions for the last 20 years. Now, she joins us to kick off a series of monthly discussions about her passion: health and well-being. After years of research and attending workshops at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Florida, Hope aims to tap into the interest that many of us have about our own health and well-being, and share her knowledge with our community.

Virtual Breakfast with Hope: Readings on Well-Being