Thursday, February 28, 2008

Feature: Shifters


Cleveland Clinic nurse fired after publishing 'tell-some' memoir.

Memoir's publication leads to 26-year employee's firing

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Michael K. McIntyre
Plain Dealer Reporter

Adrienne Zurub spent 26 years as a nurse in the cardiac operating room of the country's foremost cardiac hospital, the Cleveland Clinic.
When she wrote her memoir, observations about her career and her employer were bound to be a part of it, offering a rare peek behind the scenes at Cleveland's largest employer.
She self-published "Notes from the Mothership" on Jan. 8.
Two weeks later, she was fired.
"They told me I was fired be cause of the book . . . after 26 years of stellar employment," Zu rub, who has hired a lawyer, said in an interview. "The two administrators who fired me admitted to me they did not even read my book."
But they said they had seen excerpts. And that was enough.
Zurub compares the Clinic in her book to a "prison environment" where nurses, to survive, must have alliances with certain surgeons who afford them protection based on the surgeon's stature within the hierarchy.
"I have observed angry, uncontrolled behavior from so-called educated people that on the street would get them arrested, beat up or shot," Zurub writes. "But that culture was/is considered part of the culture of this environment, a culture of impunity, and thus covered up or taken care of internally or generally tolerated."

The Clinic obviously doesn't see it that way. Though she said the hospital wouldn't comment about a specific personnel matter, spokeswoman Eileen Sheil wrote in an e-mail: "A critical-care patient environment demands teamwork, trust, and strict adherence to patient confidentiality."

The Clinic is a private, nonprofit entity that is not required to release the same kind of information about its business that public corporations must provide. The Clinic's 29,000 workers don't often talk publicly about their working conditions.

See her website: http://adriennezurub.com/Welcome_Center.html

2 comments:

Adrienne Zurub said...

Thank you so much for posting about my situation and my book.

It is through the efforts and recognizance of people like yourself that our collective voices will improve all workplaces and working conditions.

Remarkably, my book which is my memoir has taken the angle of being the voice for those who feel disempowered, devalued, and disregarded.
It is rightly not my book, but YOUR stories as well!

Here is yet another recent article about my book and the Cleveland Clinic.
http://www.freetimes.com/stories/15/43/clinic-trials

Again, I thank you!

Adrienne Zurub
Author/Comedian/Speaker
http://adriennezurub.typepad.com

Anonymous said...

Ms.Zurub....
now you have really made my day...
Gratitudes to you.
crookedsmilee