Nursing is typically seen as one of the most meaningful and trusted professions, and yet it is not very well understood. Every day a nurse goes to work, he or she brings a unique set of skills, knowledge, personal and professional experience, personality, and heart to care for a patient and family that is often in crisis. The work is challenging, exhilarating, and can be exhausting. This site seeks to 1.) Bring voice to the inner experience of nurses who encounter suffering, healing, death, miracles, and everything in between; 2.) Encourage and support nurses and other healthcare workers who constantly battle the threat of burnout, and need to know they are not alone in their experience; 3.) Explore and restore meaning in caregiving for the worn-out caregivers.

From the author:

Hi, I’m Hui-wen (Alina) Sato, a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) nurse since 2010. I often joke that as an introvert and a fairly low-stimulation kind of person, I am working in a job where I don’t belong. Yet my passion for nursing has only grown over time, despite all of its incredible demands, complexities, and growing moral dilemmas. It is not an easy profession to be in, which makes me fight all the more fiercely for myself and my colleagues to find, rediscover, reframe, and sustain a deep sense of meaning and calling for the work we do.

Published Writing:

I have published work in American Journal of Nursing and blog regularly for them on Off the Charts. I have also published work in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, The Oxford Handbook of Meaningful Work, and The Healer’s Burden: Stories and Poems of Professional Grief.

Featured Presentations:

• My TEDxTalk with TEDxPasadena in 2017 on “How Grief Can Enable Nurses to Endure” was promoted to the main TED.com page in 2020 as “How Grief Helped Me Become a Better Caregiver.”
• I presented a webinar for Happify titled “How to Care for Yourself as a Caregiver“.
• I was featured on NPR TED Radio Hour’s episode on Heartache with my segment, “What Can Grief Provide Us.”
• I was interviewed in The Silent Why podcast on “Loss of Health and Life in Paediatric Patients,” where I share my journey, growth and processing of experiences as a pediatric ICU nurse.
• I was interviewed in the Grief is a Sneaky B!tch podcast on learning to be “Human, Not Superhero” in navigating the realities of professional grief as a PICU nurse in a culture that loves and wants superheroes to just bear and fix it all.
• I was interviewed in The Apologies Podcast about my lessons in navigating emotional burnout as a PICU nurse, and how my shift into the patient role has shaped my perspective on nursing, and vice versa.

I have presented both keynote and breakout sessions at local and national nursing conferences, and am available for speaking engagements as family obligations allow.

Thank you for visiting and reading. I hope this blog will encourage you, and help you encourage others, particularly those who work in healthcare.