Pray You Have a Professional at Your Bedside

Five years later…
Here we are,
from “heroes” to “non-professionals.”

How utterly, offensively small.
How insulting to every nurse ever.
How undeserved for the people who have carried so much.

Let’s be clear.
This isn’t about semantics.
It’s about economics.

It’s about reducing access to education and calling it reform, while the real price is paid in human exhaustion. And let’s be honest about equity. The fields being excluded from the classification of “professional”, nursing, social work, teaching, and so many more, are historically filled by women. The professions included are often led by men. The work of care has always been essential, yet too often undervalued because it is seen as service instead of expertise.

This is not partisan.
It is historical.
And we can do better.

Meanwhile, the nursing shortage grows.

And the proposed classification of “professional”, excluding nurses, makes advanced education for them harder to afford. It limits opportunity when we should be building it.

Nurse practitioners and physician assistants now deliver one in every four healthcare visits in the United States. For many conditions, they provide nearly half of all care.

Only about ten percent of registered nurses advance to APRN level roles. Ten percent, the small group trained for advanced practice, education, and leadership.

We cannot afford to weaken that pipeline when the need for care is immense.

We should be doing everything within our power to help that number grow.

Where will this path lead the American healthcare system?

For without nurses, there is no system.

Nurses make up the largest percentage of healthcare workers in the United States.

But be not confused.

What can never be taken away is the professionalism that lives inside this work.

The kind not printed on a degree, not doled out by a politician, but earned in every heartbeat and breath given.

In every moment of presence.

In the accountability when there is no margin for error.

In the compassion under pressure when someone’s life is both beginning and ending, and in all the difficult moments in between. So no, you cannot classify this away.

You cannot spreadsheet reduce the soul out of nursing.

You cannot legislate the sacred work of standing between chaos and calm and choosing compassion.

Regardless of politics, background, or belief, you cannot live your life without, at some point, needing a nurse.

And when that day comes,

when you or someone you love is in need,

pray you have a professional at your bedside.

And remember this.

We are all aboard the same sinking ship of the American healthcare system.

Panic will not keep it afloat, nor the politicians making deals behind closed doors.

But prevention can certainly help.

The best thing you can do for yourself, and for those you love, is to take care of your own health.

Eat real food.
Sleep well.
Move your body.
Breathe deeply.
Get outside.

Go find a tree and lean against it for a while. Let it remind you that steadiness still exists.

Show gratitude, kindness and love.

Lifestyle medicine is not a trend. It is what will help save us. It is what will lighten the load for those who keep showing up for you and your family, the nurses, the aides, the healers, the quiet hands holding the line.

If we want a sustainable future where equitable healthcare for all is possible, it begins with presence, participation, personal responsibility, and prevention from all.

Because the best medicine has always been found in the simple act of caring for yourself, for each other, for the world we share.

You can also do one more simple thing.

Sign the petition supporting funding for higher education for the nurses, for the ones who keep showing up.

Because when the need arises,
and make no mistake, it will,
it will not be a politician, policy, or profit that is there by your side, holding your hand.

It will be a nurse.

It will be a professional at your bedside.

Signed with gratitude and appreciation,

A nurse still contemplating her own advanced degree.
A nurse who entered the profession as a professional on an emergency license in 2020.
A nurse who is exhausted but keeps showing up.

A human that is profoundly pained and utterly disgusted.

Beth

https://ana.quorum.us/campaign/professionaldegreepetition/

Photograph: Only emptiness without the presence, compassion, and care of a nurse. (Stock photo)