I tried to think back to nursing school, to when I was fresh and anew with hope, ready to save the world, praying I would never lose my passion. Well, I still think I can save the world. That thinking lets me down some times; most other times it keeps me going, and I end up looking back thinking, “Well, I’ll be…look what we accomplished.”

I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs in my nursing career. I expect and know the same for my colleagues. However, I don’t think anyone prepared me for how great some moments – the sacred moments of nursing – would be and still are to me.

Nothing compares to the moment in which you know you changed a patient’s outcome. Nothing compares to a family sharing the best and maybe the worst moments of their lives with you. Nothing compares to you being the only other person in the room with a patient – a complete stranger – and that person looking to you for support, which may be as “simple” as a hand hold or a touch. In those sacred moments we are all one. United.

It’s difficult to explain.

As much as they may have tried, my nursing professors did not prepare me for those moments. I had to experience them myself, see and feel the humbling sacredness myself.

Nothing compares.