My decision to become a nurse occurred during a time when career choices for women were limited.

Fortunately, I grew up in an environment that supported advanced education for women and encouraged exploration of new opportunities, even when future possibilities remained unclear.

My initial exposure to nursing occurred while working in a summer position as a receptionist at local hospital. I was struck by how responsive nurses were to continually changing situations and the knowledge they had to calm the environment while never losing sight of the patient or their family. I found it exciting to be part of such dynamic environment, even if only as an observer.

This experience motivated me to seek a career in nursing … a decision I have never regretted

Over the years, I worked with children and adults across many settings, including acute care, intensive care and primary care environments. Along the way, I continued to advance my education and gained new insights about human health and the influence of environment.

I recognized how knowledge from other sciences helped to inform practice, but it was the knowledge within nursing science that helped frame interactions and guide discovery. This recognition informed my teaching, inspired my research and transformed my practice.

During my career I have had the opportunity to work with incredible nurses who participate in care that promotes holistic healing.

Dr. Marjory Gordon, helped me recognize the meaning of patterns and the importance of clinical decisions nurses make to identify and communicate human responses and improve care outcomes.

Dr. Muriel Poulin’s scholarly approach to health care delivery stressed the importance of visionary nursing leadership as the essential determinant to transforming health care.

However, it was the work of a nurse theorist, Dr. Margaret Newman, that dramatically influenced my view of nursing as a discipline and a science. Her research and scholarship gave new meaning to the importance of the nurse-patient relationship as a mutual process central to nursing. This relationship was enhanced by the intentional presence of the nurse “being with” the person as they journeyed across health care experiences.

Dr. Newman recognized health and illness as a manifestation of a whole person. Illness was viewed as an expression of health that provided an opportunity for the nurse and the individual to become more aware of life choices and to decide when changes were needed to support healthy living.

While teaching Masters and Doctoral students Boston College Connell School of Nursing, I began my journey to Mass General as a collaboration with Ed Coakley and the perioperative nursing leadership team. This work resulted in publications and funded research (NIH grant, AORN and other supporters) guided by the shared vision of the difference nurses make in care delivery.

For more than 25 years, I have experienced how the presence of nursing reshapes the care environment and offers new directions in care delivery informed by the nursing perspective.

My work with leaders like Dr. Jeanette Ives Erickson and Dr. Marianne Ditomassi (and many others) expanded my ability to articulate nursing’s distinct contributions to an interdisciplinary care team and highlighted nursing’s unique contributions to health promotion and human wellbeing.

These experiences culminated in the opportunity to lead the Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research in 2007 as part of a joint partnership with Boston College. This Center created new opportunities for doctorally prepared nurses to actively engage in the research and inquiry needed to enhance patient/family care and advance nursing science.

Nursing is an exciting transformative science, positioned to help solve global problems and enhance the human potential. The future offers nurses an opportunity to expand their understanding of the universe and its dynamic relationship with the human experience.

Nurse’s lives are changed by all those they journey with in promoting health and wellbeing. Encouraging others to choose nursing as a life career allows us to celebrate nurse’s participation in the discovery of unfolding possibilities that offer new thinking about health and humans yet to be realized.