The young woman who called to check a reference on someone I'd recommended for a job stepped in it. As the interview about my colleague's amazing skills and qualifications wound down, she asked about my own credentials, then replied, "Oh, well, you're just a nurse." Wrong answer. A nurse is never "just a nurse." If I got the chance, this is what I'd tell all those "just a nurse" folks.

On my soapbox
That nursing is more than what you think you know based on watching daytime soap dramas. That we're like icebergs — not because of frozen expressions or cold hands, but because there's a lot going on beneath the surface that you don't see. Underestimate us at your peril. That we didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be nurses. And that we didn't stop learning how to be nurses at graduation: Experience is constantly teaching us.

Maybe they heard that the job pays a lot of money (which, by the way, isn't true), but if that's the only reason someone goes into nursing, you can be sure that they won't last long in the field. As for the rumors that all we're really looking for is to marry rich doctors, well, most of us learn pretty soon after working with them why that would be a prescription for disaster.

So last time they visited a hospital, they saw us shooting the breeze at the desk? Sitting around, paging through paperwork and playing with the computer? Watch the next code blue and check out how fast we think and run. Do we look lazy to them? Do we look lightweight? Do we look scared? Not on your life. We're there when the moment strikes, whether we're tired or hungry, on good days and bad, regardless of whether we get along with the surgeon. Check out a nurse's pockets if you want to see how prepared we are for any eventuality. (I actually wear 2 scrub jackets: not on account of chilly OR temps, but because it provides me with more pockets for my stuff.)

We know our patients so well, inside and out, and keep you safe. Even the slightest change in temperature, color or mood alerts us that something isn't quite right. Nurses have the honor and the privilege to be present when you first open your eyes on the world, and we'll be there to close them when it's your time to leave it.

Our destinies
I chose nursing, or it chose me, and it gets my hackles up when someone outside the profession thinks they know what makes up a nurse. Let me put it this way: Could we do what that questionably talented HR rep who was checking references does? As somebody famous once said, I'd be conceited if I said I could, but I'd be lying if I said I couldn't. Could she do what 3.1 million of us nurses do every day? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, not a chance. But then, that's not her purpose.

Are we truly born to the purpose of nursing and the possibility of changing lives? I don't know. But I figure that, in all these years that I've been "just a nurse," my ability to make a positive difference in more than a few of the lives that fate put before me means that I've succeeded in what I show up at work to do. OSM