OPINION: Nursing is a calling

Nursing is a profession. It’s also a calling to empathetic people seeking to give back to their broader communities when members experience challenges to their physical and emotional bodies.

Many Americans found it alarming when the Trump Administration decided that nursing programs do not issue "professional" degrees. It then limited the amount nursing students can borrow to complete their degrees compared to students pursuing other degrees like law and medicine. Nursing programs, however, cannot turn out enough nurses to ease the ongoing shortage of nurses needed at all stages of patient care, including hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers, hospice programs, schools and elsewhere.

My family has a connection to nursing. My brother and I sat in the audience when our mother received her nursing degree with honors and white cap in Phoenix. Decades ago, nurses were easily recognizable for wearing white uniforms, white stockings, white shoes, while their heads were adorned with white caps. Their professional approach to their dress made them easily distinguishable.

My Aunt Liz and Great-Aunt Callie also trained to become nurses, working in Arizona and Missouri respectively. 

Last August, after watching hospice nurse Ashley skillfully administer to my mother during her last illness, my nephew Terrance trained as a certified nursing assistant in California. After he finished and passed his boards and his exams with high scores, he received his certification. Terrance immediately applied for, and received, numerous offers for jobs in New Mexico and California. Both states have shortages.

After my mother passed away on Aug. 31, 2024, my family established the Ola Mae Burr Peete Scholarship for single-parent nursing students at the University of New Mexico College of Nursing. When I met with Development Director Ann-Mary McLeod, I handed over an envelope containing five $1 bills from my mother’s 2024 Kentucky Derby winnings to begin the endowment. Ann-Mary graciously replied, “If it had been my mother, I would be handing over her bridge winnings.”

At a 2024 Holiday party, my nephew returned to help sell about $6,000 of Mom’s crafts, Afghans and crocheted caps and shoe booties for the endowment. It now contains over $30,000 after additional family members and friends from around the country made direct donations.

The UNM College of Nursing announced the first two Ola Mae Burr Peete scholars in 2025. I met the winner from Los Lunas, and we discussed her struggles to raise three children as a single mother while studying. She is a delightful, empathetic person, as one might expect from someone planning to dedicate her life to helping others.

At my mother’s 2024 memorial service, the New Mexico Nurse Honor Guard saluted her with “The Nightingale Tribute,” which began, “Nursing is a calling, a lifestyle, a way of living.” The tribute ended with, “Ola Mae Burr Peete, we thank you and officially release you from your nursing duties.” There was not a dry eye in the French’s Funeral Chapel on Lomas as nurses rang bells in my mother’s honor.

We must value nursing as a profession by providing both private and government support to help train more nurses. Our city, state and country need them.

Sherri Burr is an awarding-winning author and Professor Emerita at UNM Law School.