Dear future nurses,
I hope you are all well and healthy.
For more than a year now, it feels like we’ve been living under a constant daze caused by some unseen, terrifying, and ominous shadow. The lives we used to live seem like a distant memory, and the future offers no foreseeable relief. I bet you’ve caught yourself asking, “Is this really what I want to do?” Some of you may be asking yourselves why all this has to happen while you are studying, and I’m sure others have stopped questioning altogether—surrendering to the feeling of powerlessness over the many senseless events around us. I hope that these simple messages in my native Filipino language offer you solace and strengthens your resolve as future nurses.
It is a reality that some of you chose nursing because of your capacity to succeed in a highly academic program, and some of you took on nursing because of the overwhelming compassion you have for others. Meanwhile, some of you trust the better judgment of your parents, guardians, or generous sponsors. These are all great reasons to be student nurses, in my opinion. The program you are pursuing is like a walk in the park—Jurassic Park that is. You have to deal with anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, parasitology, biostatistics, and many core nursing courses. As a relatively young professional myself, allow me to tell you what makes four years of studying all worth it.
For one thing, a smile makes it worth all the hard work, like that one smile a patient gives you when they wake up from a coma, and they recognize your voice. It’s the “Salamat iho, salamat iha” (thank you, dear) from your geriatric patient who you helped ambulate after a dangerous surgery. It’s seeing the tired but joyful face of the mother who you helped give birth to her newborn. It is the warm, tight hug from a patient who survived multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation therapy because you always made their day a little brighter.
It’s seeing the families whose health has immensely improved because of your programs. It’s the kids who run toward you in the community because they know that their ate or kuya (big sister/brother) are there to check on their health and well-being. It is when you realize that your presence and your expert reassurance can calm hypertensive patients down. It’s when the patient in the critical care unit you cared for for two months comes to visit you months later with their gratitude.
Nursing is about helping significant others cope with the loss of their loved ones under your care. It is advocating for your patient who was disowned and abandoned because of their HIV diagnosis. Nursing is about going home wondering what else you could have done but recognizing that you are but one person. I hope you all realize that, as nurses, you will give your patients your all. This separates us from other medical and allied medical professionals—our unique caring expression and human connection. We feel immensely for our patients, and it motivates us to think of all the ways to help them. We care not only because it’s our duty. We care because we genuinely want our patients to be better off.
We are not mere assistants of medical doctors. We are professionals who make a profound and positive impact on the lives of those entrusted to our care. In our desire to dispel this negative and dangerous misconception of our profession; we have to constantly be diligent in our studies, research, and service. A nurse is expected to use the knowledge of other disciplines and jargon (that is why you study anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, etc.) and transform that into nursing care that will benefit our patients. The road to becoming a nurse has always been a challenging one, but now so more than ever. That is why I salute you all who are still persevering and still studying online to become nurses.
Together, we can all get through this.
Together, let us change the lives of patients in need of our care.
Together, let us change the healthcare system to be more equitable, just, and inclusive.
We cannot do it by ourselves. We need a cadre of exceptional nurses to help us affect the change the world needs now. We look forward to the day that we “return to normal,” but for now, Yakap na mahigpit! (Tight hugs!) I send you all strength and resolve so you may continue on this path, trust the process, and persevere even more because the world awaits you.
Noriel Calaguas, MSHSA, RN, ACRN, is an assistant professor and chairperson at the Holy Angel University School of Nursing and Allied Medical Sciences. He is a member of Sigma’s Lambda Delta Chapter.