A few days ago, someone in nursing school told me, with all the pride and certainty in the world, that they would never stay “just a nurse.” They insisted they’d 100% go on to get their NP degree. I smiled, because I recognized that confidence, that determination, that little trace of pride.
Then today, I got in my car and saw an old picture of myself. On the left, a younger me—fresh out of school, excited, wide-eyed, telling anyone who asked that I had no plans of being “just a nurse.” I was ready to take on the world, certain I was meant for more.
Now, almost two years later, I look at that picture and smile at her. She didn’t know what she didn’t know. Because now, I’m learning what it actually means to be “just a nurse.”
It means never really sleeping. It means messy hair, smudged makeup, and nails that will never see a salon. It means nights spent awake while the rest of the world rests. It means missing three nights out of seven at home, even as a newlywed, and learning how hard that really is.
But it also means something deeper, something she couldn’t have known back then.
It means I am not too good to care for anyone, no matter their story or background.
It means I will not judge you for the choices you made before or during your pregnancy—I will care for you with compassion, the way Jesus would.
It means I will kneel beside you to clean the blood on the floor after your first steps post-delivery, and I will do it with patience and dignity.
It means if you cannot sleep, I will sit and talk with you, even if it’s midnight and I’m behind on my charting.
It means I will cry with you when your baby is rushed to the NICU, when the doctors don’t yet have answers, when your grief feels unbearable.
It means I will pick up the phone at 3:30 a.m. and call the doctor for you—even if my hands shake because I’ve already woken them twice before.
It means I will become what you need me to be—your hairstylist, your waitress, your babysitter, your janitor, your advocate, your friend.
Because that’s what being “just a nurse” really is.
I am still learning. Still a baby nurse. Every shift teaches me something new. Maybe one day I’ll go back for my NP degree—maybe not. But what I know now, with a certainty I didn’t have before, is that being “just a nurse” is something extraordinary.
Because at the end of the day, “just a nurse” means being someone who stands beside you in the most vulnerable moments of your life. Someone who carries the weight of your pain, your fear, your hope.
And that? That is something I’m proud to be.
