This is the time of year when, at nursing schools all over the country, the graduating cohort of nurses receive their pin. We’re delighted to be celebrating our own graduates at the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing with their pinning ceremony on June 13, and are proud that their nursing careers begin here, with us.
Because it’s pinning time, in recent weeks I have been thinking about the significance of the pin – a symbol of service dating back some 100 years – and I have also been thinking about leadership, and our hopes and ambitions for our alumni this and every year.
This issue of our newsletter celebrates nurse leaders: leaders from among the ranks of millions of nurses, all of whom, with the receipt of their pin, dedicated their lives to service in the care of those in need.
Service and leadership may sound like a contradiction but in fact, they are essential to one another. For what is a leader, if not someone who serves a cause greater than themselves? A leader is not someone who tells others what to do, or who is vested with the trappings of power. A leader, for their leadership to be meaningful, serves in a way that others wish, and feel morally compelled, to follow.
And what is our service worth if we do not persist with what we know to be right, even – or particularly – when it’s hard, or things stand in our way? Of all the nurse leaders we celebrate in this issue, that is the universal theme: nurses who saw something that needed doing for the greater good – to spread nursing’s care and influence – and went ahead and did it.
The next issue is out on June 21. Subcribe to our monthly newsletter by texting UCINURSING to 22828!
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