By Cynthia Clark

A friend asked me recently why I am still a nurse. Let’s face it, being a nurse these days is very difficult, demanding work. Nurses are under pressure to treat more people more quickly and for less money. And as baby boomers age and increase demands for quality health care, America’s nurses are aging as well, and fewer young people are entering the profession.

So I thought about the more than two decades I have been a nurse, and I realized that I am still in the profession of nursing, like so many of my colleagues, because very simply, we make a difference. Nursing is a holistic, healing and health promoting art and science … and, sadly, a vocation whose members are leaving the profession in record numbers.

As our nation finds itself in the midst of a nursing shortage, the public may be asking, “Where are the nurses?” While we may be fewer in number, we are working diligently and creatively to address this shortage, and we are still very visible, very industrious and very vital.

If you look closely, you will notice that nurses are everywhere. We are in the emergency rooms and the intensive care units caring for the injured and the severely ill…comforting families and sharing special moments with loved ones. We are in the schools, often understaffed and underrepresented, tending to children and reaching out to parents in a show of support for rearing these children during turbulent times.

There we are in the classroom, educating nursing students to be skilled practitioners in this noble, and at times arduous, profession. We were at ground zero on September 11, and we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan ministering to patients who need us, regardless of their ethnicity or religion.

We are in the neighborhoods and the barrios teaching basic first aid to sheepherders and farm workers who have so very little and who need so very much. We are in the homeless shelters administering to the parents and children down on their luck, wondering where their next meal will come from and how they will possibly provide shelter and an education for their children. We are at the bedsides of dying people, helping to make their last earthly moments peaceful ones.

We are in the African villages, trying desperately to ease the suffering of those afflicted with HIV/AIDS. We’re in the mother/baby unit, delivering life and promise into the world. We’re at the Statehouse, crafting legislation and lobbying for health care changes to improve and save lives in spite of what often seems like insurmountable odds.

That’s us in the streets and the high schools trying valiantly to understand the issues of adolescent aggression, and working hard to end the violence. We’re at the Centers for Disease Control and at institutions of higher learning, standing shoulder to shoulder with other researchers working long and hard to find ways to eradicate disease, chaos, disorder and threats of bio-terrorism.

We’re in the neonatal intensive care unit when the tiny little infant who has been so ill and so compromised is now thriving and healthy and going home. We’re running alongside the breast cancer survivors in the Race for the Cure, women who have triumphed over cancer and have beat the odds.

So you see, nurses are everywhere. But we are becoming fewer and fewer. You may wonder if there will be a nurse for you when you need one most. May 6-12, 2003 is National Nurses Week. Join us as the nation honors nurses and celebrates their commitment to caring and compassion.

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