The Heart of Health Care

This is an excerpt from The Scranton Journal feature, which you can find in its entirety here.

The Year of the Nurse provides a challenge met by Scranton nursing alumni and students.

A profession that began in the United States during the Civil War, nursing has been a calling that patients may have taken for granted entering 2020.

Nurses are often cited as the “heart of health care,” so it was fitting that, in February, the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed 2020 “The Year of the Nurse and the Midwife.” Little did the world know that, just weeks later, nurses would be at the center of a global crisis.

As COVID-19 swept through the nation, University of Scranton nursing graduates around the region and across the country sprang into action as the first defense against the deadly pandemic. And, as their predecessors have for more than 160 years, Scranton nurses stepped up to the challenge. And then some.

“The idea of celebrating The Year of the Nurse is a great thing, and we couldn't look any further than COVID-19 to see that,” said Lt. Col. William White, head of Scranton’s ROTC program that trains several Scranton ROTC nurses a year. “Some of our (ROTC) nurses got mobilized to go all over the world. Those are our nurses out there.”

The University highlighted some stories about nurses in a section in Royal News called Royals Respond. And hundreds of Scranton family members and friends recognized Royals on the frontlines, many of them nurses, through the University’s Honor Roll. These Scranton graduates were undoubtedly “men and women for others” during a time of drastic need.

Continue reading about alumni and student nurses in The Scranton Journal article, here.