Happy Nurses Week to all of my fellow nurses who give us, according to this year’s theme, “4 Million Reasons to Celebrate.”

If we’re honest though, we can at times struggle with our profession as much as (or sometimes more than) we feel we love and celebrate what we do.

In my Nurses Week blog post for American Journal of Nursing, I write about what I hear so many nurses say they long for. “We want to advocate for our patients’ rights, not violate them. We want to connect, and not just function. We want to heal, even at our patients’ end of life, and not harm.”

You can read the entire blog post here. I am longing for all of us both individually and collectively to find enduring meaning in this work we do.