Q: What is your name and where do you work?

A: My name is Ani, and I’m an emergency room nurse in New York City.

Q: What made you decide to be a nurse?

A: I became a nurse because I think that nursing is where all the action is. I think in any type of nursing that you do, you're kind of right at the center of patient care. Nursing is tough and it takes tough people to do the job and I think that's really cool. It takes emotional toughness and physical toughness. I do the job because I care about the work that we do, but I also just love nurses.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you?

A: My typical week is honestly really variable. I am getting my PhD right now, so some days are mainly my PhD work — coding, running data analysis, writing. Other days I go into the ER and it's a 13-hour shift.

The thing I love about the ER is that you really don't know what you're gonna get on any given day. There's such a variability in types of patients and conditions we see, and you can have anywhere from 2-3 to 10-12 patients. It makes the job challenging, but also just so exciting to have so much variability. Someone can just roll into the trauma room at any moment and we have to be ready to go.

Q: What do you wish people outside of healthcare knew or understood about nurses?

A: This year has brought to light how challenging the role of nursing is, and I'm really grateful for that because I think that nurses have gotten recognition that we deserve. At the same time, I think the job of nursing is hard every year, regardless of whether or not there’s a pandemic.

Nursing is hard – every type of nursing, whether you're a school nurse or a flight nurse, or you're working in a nursing home or you visit people's homes yourself... As important as it is for the general public to celebrate nurses, I also think it's really important for nurses to celebrate each other during this time. It's like nurses are in this special club. We really have been in the trenches, and we know what it's like for each other. It’s a really important time for us to remind each other why we're doing the work that we do.

Q: What is your superpower?

A: The superpower I wish I had is to not require sleep, but I think the superpower I do have is putting people at ease. It's calm-under-pressure, which I would hope any emergency room nurse would have. But yeah, my superpower is putting people at ease with dad jokes, or with any type of joke really.

Q: Can you tell us about a moment or story that reminds you why you love being a nurse?

A: In the ER, we have so many different patients. I could tell you stories about taking care of Holocaust survivors. I could tell you about helping Covid patients FaceTime their families before we put them under to intubate them. I think these moments are truly meaningful and have really shown me what it means to step in and help during people's most vulnerable and painful moments.

But I think the thing that excites me the most is when you have a really critical patient out of nowhere, because to me that's just healthcare at its best. It's people working together so well. It’s camaraderie between so many different types of healthcare clinicians and professionals. It's communication and leadership, and it's also kindness. We all work with a shared purpose.

Nursing the ultimate teamwork and call of duty. It feels like it's game time, honestly, and obviously when it works in the patient's favor with a lovely outcome it’s just so beautiful and exciting to see.