HEALTH & FITNESS
careers / on the cover
"I guess I didn't realize how
much of a difference you can
make — even in the little
things you say," says Alana
Greenberg, an ICU nurse at
William Beaumont Hospital,
pictured as she hangs a
feeding tube for a patient.
Photo Courtesy of Beaumont Hospitals
Changing Times
Nursing becoming more of an attraction as a Jewish profession.
Judith Doner Berne
Special to the Jewish News
A
lana Greenberg's fellow
nurses may alert her that
in "Room 2 is one of your
people."
Although Greenberg, 24, a nurse in
the intensive care unit (ICU) at William
Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, works
with every culture and religion, "I've
had the opportunity to take care of
many Jewish patients, including rabbis
and specifically the Orthodox."
She feels able "to empathize and
develop a deeper connection with these
patients and their families because we
come from a similar background and
share some common values," says the
graduate of Andover High School in
Bloomfield Hills and the University of
Michigan's School of Nursing.
Greenberg, who grew up at Temple
Beth El, a Reform congregation in
Bloomfield Township, says she quickly
familiarized herself with prescribed
rituals involved in caring for Orthodox
Jewish patients who are severely ill or
dying.
"With the Orthodox, the end-of-life
care is very different," she says.
Greenberg works to help her col-
leagues understand not just the pro-
cedures, but also the reasons behind
them. One Orthodox family was so
grateful, they invited her for dinner, she
says. And there was the woman who
asked if the medicine that Greenberg
was swabbing inside her mouth was
kosher. She was able to assure her that
it wasn't food.
"I think there is a general aware-
ness in the Metro Detroit health care
system of the need to be sensitive to
different cultures," says Rabbi E.B.
"Bunny" Freedman, executive director
of the Jewish Hospice and Chaplaincy
Network based in West Bloomfield.
It isn't necessary for Jewish patients
to be attended to by Jewish nurses,
Freedman says, "but sometimes they
add value to care."
Debunking A Myth
"Jewish nurses? There aren't any, are
there?" begins a chapter of Evelyn
Rose Benson's 2001 book As We See
Ourselves: Jewish Women in Nursing.
Benson answers that question in
the affirmative as she presents the
contributions of Jewish women to the
development of the nursing profession
and describes the experiences of more
contemporary Jewish nurses.
Still, it hasn't been a profession that
has attracted a lot of Jews (See related
story — next page, top).
"I was the only one in my Jewish
crowd who went to nursing school,"
says Sandy Wormser, a West
Bloomfield resident who graduated
from a Philadelphia hospital-based
nursing program in 1963. "They all
went into teaching. I was the token Jew
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