Here are a couple of things that I found regarding Adrienne Zurub's book and firing.
Firings At Cleveland's Largest Employer Reveal Tension Beneath The Well-designed Surface
The Cleveland Clinic's firing of 26-year nurse Adrienne Zurub - for self-publishing a book, Notes From the Mothership - does not tell the entire story of less-than-stellar public relations moves by the region's largest employer. Efforts to establish the Cleveland Clinic as a brand, complete with logo change and a book- publishing division, have created all manner of questions and concerns.
First came the Cleveland Clinic's own publishing venture, the Cleveland Clinic Press, launched under Lawrence D. Chilnick, hired as editorial director in April 2005. Chilnick - whose latest book (not for the Clinic Press) The First Year: Heart Disease was recently covered by The Plain Dealer - is one of the leading book-publishing experts in the country. His self-published The Pill Book sold 14 million copies (publishers consider most books a success if they sell 25,000) and led to a career as a publisher, editor, author and faculty member of New York University's School of Publishing.
Chilnick was given a mandate to develop popular-market books, most ghost-written for Clinic experts and meant to become the national standard for various health issues. Everything from arthritis to heart disease would be covered, though always where the Clinic's knowledge would be seen as state of the art, plus the occasional personal memoir (ranging from living with an Alzheimer's patient to raising a hopelessly mentally ill child). The initial plan was to release 25 books in 2008.
What happened next is open to debate. What is certain is that Chilnick was never a Clinic team player. He was hired to create a successful publishing company, and was critical of people who did not perform as promised, ignoring the usual friendships and office politics to his detriment. He also asked questions such as why, in December 2005, was the Clinic making the costly move of changing its logo from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation to the Cleveland Clinic? This was a time when the region's economy was in crisis and many smaller employers were eliminating or reducing health-care benefits in order to avoid laying off staff. There were questions about whether the Clinic, focused on expanding to wealthy suburbs, wealthy retirees in Florida and wealthy oil sheiks in the Middle East, served the community surrounding its main campus.
Tensions continued to build at the Clinic Press and Chilnick was fired in what he sees as a political move by less skilled but more ambitious staff members. Writers working for the press at the time were told that the change had nothing to do with the books in progress or the books planned. However, there were rumors that the book- publishing division would be absorbed into the general publications department.
Whatever was taking place no longer matters. The Plain Dealer reported on Zurub, the nurse who was fired for self-publishing. It did not mention that no later than April of this year, the entire staff of the Cleveland Clinic Press will be on the streets seeking new jobs. Those at the top were not offered positions in other departments.
As for Chilnick's questions unrelated to book publishing, they remain both valid and unanswered. The logo change, for example: Every time a logo is changed, everything that bears the previous logo has to be replaced - every piece of letterhead, memo pad, medical or insurance form, sign, etc. Dropping "Foundation" from Cleveland Clinic and changing the design cost an estimated $6 million. Yet the Clinic continues to claim it is a nonprofit wherever it is located, even though its suburban facilities, such as in Beachwood, do not seem to meet the legal standard.
And if the Clinic spends money on image that could go to subsidizing indigent and working-poor medical care, and closes its book division, it is no wonder that it fired a nurse for writing and publishing a book critical of some of the Clinic practices and persons. She probably should have gone to The Plain Dealer, though that might have created a problem for the paper's publisher, who is on the Clinic's board of directors. (Yes, The Plain Dealer carried the story of the firing on the first page. But it did not quote or discuss any of the passages that were supposedly too offensive to allow an experienced nurse to remain on staff.)
Oh, what a tangled web we weave. - Michael O'Flaherty

Inspired and Fired!
by Adrienne Zurub
February 09, 2008 07:46 AM EST
comments: 1
This is an incredible review of my book, 'Notes From The Mothership The Naked Invisibles' the review in itself is an incredible read! Let the story unfold...
Adrienne Zurub spent 26 years of her life as a member of the Cleveland Clinic open heart/heart transplant surgery team.
A couple of weeks ago, after almost three decades of professional nursing in the premier heart surgery center, she was fired.
Why?
She wrote a book.
This book.
It's a book about, well, Adrienne Zurub! A "half-century grrl", registered nurse, wife, spoken-word poet, mother, stand-up comic, daughter and writer.
Through stories and vignettes, she describes people, places and events that shaped her growth in all these areas.
It's natural that some of these vignettes would be be about her time on the prestigious heart surgery service.
And the characters that populate the cardiac surgery suites. Doctors, patients and nurses.
*****
I had to know what ticked off Cleveland Clinic so badly that they felt they had to terminate Adrienne's employment.
After all, this book isn't about Cleveland Clinic, it's about Adrienne.
Does Cleveland Clinic have a institutional ego problem or was Adrienne off-the-wall?
I decided to buy the book and judge for myself.
I'm glad I got it when I did - amazon.com sold out of it right after I ordered it!
I read it in one sitting.
*****
Was it because she was brutally honest about the environment she worked in, the team she worked with?
The brilliant and the arrogant? The skilled and the misogynistic? The exhausted and the doormats?
Surgeons yelling at nurses? Surgeons yelling at patients? Patients yelling at surgeons?
What did Cleveland Clinic find objectionable about the fact that the heart team is comprised of unbelievably talented, dedicated doctors and nurses who are inherently human... and, rarely, all too fallible?
*****
Maybe it was the patient stories.
Surely these are composites. Twenty-six years of surgery experience would tend to provide a lot of samples.
Was it the patient who tried to conduct the OR? The one who told a surgeon to go-to-hell by a rather extraordinary feat?
Or the ones that made my throat and eyes burn as I tried not to cry so I could finish the story?
Which ones did Cleveland Clinic disapprove of?
*****
Then again, maybe it's the fact that despite "magnet" status, Cleveland Clinic does not treat their nurses with the same respect and deference they show to the doctors.
A keychain here, a water bottle there, an occasional T-shirt instead of decent pay and benefits.
Or the fact that a fancy chicken dinner and a watch is considered a big treat after twenty-five years and Adrienne wasn't buying into it.
Cleveland Clinic couldn't possibly have been upset with that. They certainly don't have the copyright on paying lip service to how much they value their nurses and then treating them like so much chattel.
*****
Adrienne herself describes the book as "provocative" and it is!
And yet, it is not an "in-your-face" diatribe, it is more like a "face-to-face" look at an intelligent, funny fifty-something nurse with opinions on pretty much everything, including her time as an RN at the Cleveland Clinic.
They say nursing has no "voice". Well, Adrienne has one. And she is paying the price for it.
I hope she laughs all the way to the bank with her writing and her stand-up comedy.
She deserves success.
Buy the book.
And if you are put off by honest, humorous, poignant, earthy, "provocative" literature with an "adult" word here and there.....
Buy it any
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2169222.Notes_From_the_Mothership_The_Naked_Invisibles

cd I've got a couple emails out to a few nurses I knew back there. Apparently from what I've read this has absolutely exploded the lid off the clinic..............couldn't happen to a more deserving place

I have searched every where for the book and only found one place where I could put it on my wishlist to be notified when it was available

cdnurse: how many points did you get for this novel?

cd: you'll always be a star to the rest of us :P

I put this book on my wish list at Amazon, which is supposed to be getting a second printing. I hope it comes out soon: I am eager to read this book.

This Clinic practices what I call Management by Intimidation. I've worked at a lot of places that do the same thing. If these self-centered CEOs would just treat staff like people instead of commodities, there wouldn't BE a nursing shortage. Unfortunately, this is how hospitals have functioned since the late 19th century.

Adrienne, I want to thank you for writing your book and I can't wait to get my hands on it to read. It's on my wish list at Amazon and believe me I'm going to go down to Border's here in Tacoma, Wa and badger them to order it. I've already told a huge number of my colleagues here in the area about it. They are all as excited as I am about reading it. Good Luck!!

I would really like to get my hands on this book. My father died at the clinic recently and it was anything but a normal death. They are hiding something and I think it may have connections to what is mentioned in this book. Please, if anyone can give me a heads up as to where this can be found I would really appreciate it. We need to stop this from happening again. The death total from that time period is up to 8 and there may be more patients dying before we can make something happen.

Dmazment: thanks for the info on the book.