Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Theresa Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs, but she knows that being a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care. Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit healthcare industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for.

Practicing nurse and New York Times columnist Theresa Brown invites us to experience not just a day in the life of a nurse, but all the life that happens in just one day on a busy teaching hospital’s cancer ward. In the span of 12 hours, lives can be lost, life-altering treatment decisions made, and dreams fulfilled or irrevocably stolen. Unfolding in real time, THE SHIFT gives an unprecedented view into the individual struggles as well as the larger truths about medicine in this country. By shift’s end, we have witnessed something profound about hope and humanity.