"Clinically accurate and artfully poignant, these stories provide another way of knowing. I wish I had read this book when I was a nursing student. The Bell Lap is ready made for the classroom of medical students, nursing students, and other healthcare givers. Patients and family members as well as the general public can learn something from it too. There is a community inside and outside the door of the patient’s room. The nurse, more than any other healthcare giver, is a member of both communities and an advocate for the patient in both. Murch has elevated advocacy to an art form in The Bell Lap." – Judy Schaefer, Hospital Drive

The Bell Lap has been awarded third place in the 2016 AJN Book of the Year Awards in the Palliative Care and Hospice Category.

The Bell Lap explores, with great insight, the multiple lessons of living and dying. These stories offer engaging and invaluable insights for trainees, practicing nurses, and other health professionals working in the field. Through these stories, the author has laid the ground for caregivers to reach beyond the confines of the settings of illness, whether home, hospital, or long-term care and become an active and involved participant in the world of the patient.