Dr. Cynthia Clark: Nurses are life's unnoticed heroes

Nurses are incredible. Moving about in their own quiet way, most go unnoticed until certain life events bring their presence sharply into focus. Like the nurses who cheered as our children took their first vital breaths, and the nurses who comforted us in our acute grief as our beloved mother drew her last breath.

The current nursing shortage is taking its toll. By some estimates, the shortage of nurses in the United States could reach as high as a half million by 2025. These numbers are concerning. While we may be fewer in number, and while we are working diligently and creatively to address the nursing shortage, nurses everywhere are working tirelessly day after day to care for others. They work to make a difference, to prevent illness and injury, to ease suffering, and to offer hope where hope sometimes seems impossible.

Look around you. Nurses are everywhere. We are in the emergency rooms and the intensive care units caring for the injured and the severely ill. We are in the schools, tending to your children and reaching out to families to provide education and support. We are sitting with the mentally ill homeless man whose only human contact in many days will come from us. We are in the classrooms, educating nursing students to be skilled practitioners in this noble and, at times, arduous profession.

We are in the neighborhoods and the barrios teaching basic first aid to sheepherders who have so little and who need so much. We are in the free clinics listening to desperate parents who worry about making ends meet, feeding their families, and providing a decent home and an education for their children. We are at the bedside with the dying, hoping to make their last earthly moments peaceful ones. We are in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan helping people rebuild their broken lives. We are in the African villages, trying desperately to ease the suffering of those afflicted with HIV/AIDS.

We are in the delivery room bringing promise into the world. We are at the Statehouse crafting legislation and lobbying for health care reform in spite of what often seems like insurmountable odds. We are in the streets trying valiantly to prevent gang violence, and working hard to end the killing. We are at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working as part of a research team to find ways to prevent diseases like swine flu and threats of bioterrorism.

We are in the neonatal intensive care center when the fragile little infant who has been so ill is now thriving and finally going home. We are running with breast cancer survivors to find a cure. We are in the nursing homes tending to the frail, elderly grandfather who spends his days remembering a life well-lived.

You see, nurses are everywhere, and I'm certain that each of us has a story to tell. So, this week is Nurses Week - a time to pause and say thank you to all the nurses in our lives. A time to celebrate the quiet heroes whose very presence in our own lives brings out the best in all of us.

Dr. Cynthia Clark is a professor of nursing at Boise State University.