This month's cover photograph, entitled I've Got You Now. You're Going to be Okay, earned photographer Kevin Buehler an honorable mention in the photo-journalism contest The Faces of Caring: Nurses at Work, cosponsored last spring by AJN and the New York University Division of Nursing.
The University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics asked Buehler and six other photographers-The Documentary Group-to capture the work of nurses during a 24-hour period in February as a way of encouraging and retaining nurses. The photographers took 5,300 photographs in all; several were published in the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, and an in-house book will be published soon.
Buehler, a graduate student in finance at the university, was assigned to document the ED and surgical units. The cover photograph of nurse Brenda Korner and her patient was taken within moments of the patients' arrival after suffering a number of seizures. Says Buehler: "The scene was about teams of very well-trained, hard-working professionals taking care of very sick patients who arrived scared and hurt." The ED had already experienced three level-one traumas and a full board of walkins by noon that day, but Buehler says the nurses handled this patient calmly and efficiently.
In the photograph on this page, Buehler has captured a moment of intimacy between nurse Scott Truman and a patient on the surgical unit. "I am still in awe of nurse's ability to act so quickly and show so much humanity," Buehler says.