By Robert Scally, assistant editor
David Voss, RN, CCRN, has combined his vocation and avocation—nursing and
music—by writing what may be the first-ever rock opera about nursing.
When Voss was 14, he underwent an appendectomy. While he was in the hospital
recovering from the surgery, a man came around and checked his dressing and made
him feel more comfortable. Puzzled, Voss asked his mother who the person was.
"She told me that man was a nurse," said Voss, who currently works at
Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. "I didn’t know that men
could be nurses."
After his hospital stay, the young and musically inclined Voss envisioned two
career paths for himself: Rock star or nurse. Voss said he went with nursing
"when I figured out I wasn’t going to be a rock star."
Although making it as a rock star may have been a nearly impossible dream for
Voss, who lives in Fredericktown, Missouri, a rural community about 90 minutes
south of St. Louis, the road to becoming a nurse wasn’t exactly easy.
In rural Missouri in the 1970s, nursing was not considered an acceptable
career choice for a male. "I took a lot of crap in high school about wanting to
be a nurse," Voss said.
The flack didn’t let up when he went to nursing school. Voss was told by one
of his nursing school instructors at Mineral Area College in Park Hills,
Missouri, that he had no aptitude for nursing and he should try another line of
work.
That was 27 years ago. During the past three decades, Voss not only has a
successful nursing career, he’s kept on rocking, writing songs and composing
Taking Care of Memories: A Nursing Opera, an 18-song rock opera.
Voss said that he thinks of nursing as not just caring for people’s physical
ailments, but also of "taking care of memories," the moments that comprise a
person’s life.
Original, direct and sometimes gritty, Taking Care of Memories depicts
the realties of nursing in a world where corporate missions, cost containment
and endless paperwork sometimes take precedence over patient care. Some
listeners could perceive the work as cynical, but Voss said that experienced
nurses who have heard Taking Care of Memories find it brutally honest and
accurate.
"I refer to it as nursing warts and all," Voss said of his opera.
The Taking Care of Memories concept came to Voss when he was working
in an intensive care ward while caring for a young man who had suffered a gun
shot wound to the head.
"His brains were oozing out his nose," Voss recalled. "I had to keep wiping
them away and every time I did I wondered ‘what am I wiping away now, is it his
senior prom; his first kiss?’ That’s when I realized that what we do as nurses
is really taking care of memories, whether it’s the memories of the patient or
the memories of a patient’s family."
Taking Care of Memories also grew out of an unpublished book that Voss
wrote several years ago, which was a diary of one year of his life as an ICU
nurse.
"The original idea [for the opera] has been around in my head for about 15
years," Voss said.
A guitar player, Voss said he was influenced musically by Pete Townsend, of
the rock band The Who. Townsend penned two of the best-known rock operas,
Tommy and Quadraphenia, both of which became stage productions and
feature films. Voss said some of his songwriting influences include John Lennon,
Bruce Springsteen, Harry Chapin and Melissa Ethridge.
Voss’s recording of Taking Care of Memories is technically primitive,
done in his bedroom studio. It is what is referred to in the recording industry
as a "demo" recording, which is designed to convey the essence of what a
full-blown production would be like.
Since recording his Taking Care of Memories demo, Voss has
purchased new digital recording gear and is working on writing and attempting to
market other songs he has written.
"This is literally my second job now," Voss said of his songwriting. "I come
home from work and spend three to six hours a day playing and recording." Voss
said that at his hospital job he usually works seven 12-hours shifts, mostly on
nights, spread over two weeks.
Sherry, Voss’ wife of 27 years, is "very understanding" of his songwriting
and recording, especially since the couple’s bedroom doubles as his studio.
One of Voss’ two sons, Jordan, is following, at least partially, in his
footsteps. Jordan, 21, is a guitar player in a local band and is studying to be
a surgical technician at a local college. His other son, Tony, 23, is carving
out a career in broadcasting, he said.
While Voss is pursing his dream of a career as a songwriter, he said he has
found respect as a man in the female-dominated nursing profession.
A colleague recently told him that he "fell out of the cradle a nurse." Not
bad for a guy who was once told he had no aptitude for nursing.
While Voss said he’s serious about trying to become a professional
songwriter, he also said: "I’m not going to give up my night job anytime soon."
© 2003. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.