Documenting our nursing stories: The American Nurse Project

The American Nurse Project aims to elevate and celebrate nurses in this country by capturing their personal stories through photography and film. Photographer Carolyn Jones and her team traveled to every corner of the U.S. to record the unique experiences of nurses at work. The photographs and narratives shed light on what it means to be a nurse in our country, and who the women and men are who have pledged their lives to the care of others.

The journey began in New York City, where Carolyn met nurses working in the district with the highest rate of hunger in the U.S., as well as nurses doing health outreach to at-risk teens. She moved southward, stopping in Baltimore to meet nurses on the cutting edge of healthcare and nurse educators training the next generation, and then traveled to San Diego, where she met nurses at a VA hospital that is home to the largest concentration of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. In Louisiana, she went behind bars and met nurses dealing with prisoners; and in Riverton, Wyoming she learned about the health needs of the Native American population there.

As we traveled across the country to interview and photograph nurses, certain common themes rose to the surface. In these topic-driven videos, we have cut together a dialogue between nurses from different disciplines, all around common themes that the nurses felt passionately about.

Bedside
Diabetes
Education
End-of-Life
Obesity
Paperwork
Poverty
Technology
U.S. Healthcare System
Why Nursing?