Nursing is in my heart!

[N2000]

Have you found that--despite the long hours, low pay, hard work, and abundant other frustrations--that nursing has found a niche in your heart from which it cannot be excised? Are you accepted and respected as a actively contributing member of the health care team? Have cost constraints charging you to do more for less and do it better threatened to erode the quality of the care you provide below the basic minimum standard of nursing care? Have you considered leaving nursing because you find the position you find yourself in as a nurse untenable?

Have we as nurses demonstrated our commitment and professionalism? Do we demonstrate behavior respectful of ourselves and our profession? Recent polls find nurses as the single most trusted provider of 'medical' care (to use the term in its most global sense) within the US today. What an amazing gift; there is incredible power to be harnessed here!

What would happen if each of us--the most respected providers of 'medical care' in the U.S. today--took a stand on the adequacy and needs of our faltering health care system and the need for reform in nursing? Should we find out?

[pickledpepperRN]

Agree totally!