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I do not believe that any one quotation or phrase can be a complete philosophy or rule all human interactions. Still, we do tend to center our actions around small phrases which have large impacts, take “first do no harm” for physicians.

I am not a physician, but a midwife, wife and mother. In each of these aspects of my life I am extremely interested in promoting self esteem and expanding people’s idea of the limits of “I can.” I grew up in a family whose dysfunctions could have crippled anyone’s belief in themselves, but kept finding inspiration to grow. Growing beyond weakness is wonderful and I want to give it to everyone.

As a young woman I realized that every moment we spend with one another can have immeasurable effects, either good or bad. One phrase shared at the right moment can move someone forward in power and sense of self, the wrong one can hurt more than we know ( The amazing thing is that one can retrieve and take back the harmful ones but seldom the enhancing ones.)

So I try to take each moment and pause and think; How can I be gracious with this person, it is so simple to be kind and check out where someone is coming from before marching into my agenda for the meeting. Quakers say “there is that of god in everyone” I speak to others as though this were true. I use Ghandi’s maxim ” first is to be humble” and know that every moment is not all about me. But most importantly, I try to love each new person I work with genuinely. People respond to respect, and rise to the occasion when respected.

I am lucky because as a midwife I help new parents bring new people who are totally open into the world. but also as a nurse I work with aged and dying people who are learning to let go of life graciously. Life, death, newborns, the aged, I work with the most precious things on earth.

I believe that it only takes a moment to open a universe of hope, the tools are simple; graciousness, humility, and love. One never regrets an interaction where these tools are used, and why have a life filled with regret?

“A Universe of Hope,” Copyright © 2005 by Katy Maker. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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I believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. I believe human life is a sacred gift worthy of the highest esteem.

As a nurse caring for two of the most vulnerable populations, children and the elderly, I have had the profound honor of caring for individuals and families during some of their most challenging and life-altering experiences.

These experiences have both challenged and helped shaped my beliefs.

During my last year of college, I interned in the neonatal intensive care unit at one of the nation’s premier children’s hospitals. I witnessed neonates weighing only ounces struggle to survive in spite of complex health conditions with potential lifelong consequences. I placed dying neonates in parents’ arms and witnessed the incomprehensible grief from losing one’s child. Consequently, I was forced to weigh the sanctity of human life against medical ethics and parental choice and rights.

As a pediatric critical care, oncology, home care, and hospice nurse, I have cared for children with a variety of acute, chronic, and terminal illnesses and stood at the bedside of children as they and their parents coped with life-altering illness and/or said their final “Good-bye”. In my current role as a surveyor of long-term care facilities, I interact with individuals in their final stages of life and witness the difficult decisions regarding quality versus quantity of life that they and their families are forced to consider. These experiences compel me to continuously reevaluate my belief and engage in ongoing introspection regarding the essence of the sanctity and dignity of human life.

Over fourteen years ago, I was informed that I was expecting quadruplets. The infertility specialist recommended that I “reduce” my pregnancy to a triplet or twin pregnancy to reduce the risk of complications to myself and increase the chance of survival for the remaining embryos, and the high risk obstetrician expressed his desire that we “selectively reduce” two of my impregnated embryos as well. Within the context of my belief regarding the sanctity of human life, sacrificing one or two of my children for the survival of the others was not an option. My steadfast belief was put to the test as I waited several more months until my children’s birth to see if any, some, or all of my children would survive and a few years to find out if any, some, or all of my children would experience a compromised quality of life as a result of their quadruplet birth.

Although I can honestly say that I never questioned whether or not I made the right decision, I wondered daily what the consequences of my decision would be.

My professional and personal life experiences have taught me that the inviolability of human life is a complex and multifaceted issue with different spiritual, social, and personal implications for all of us. For me, the sanctity and dignity of human life is an unassailable truth, personified daily in the faces of my children and patients.

“The Inviolability of Human Life,” Copyright © 2009 by Martha Smith. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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In considering my philosophy, three questions arise: what do I believe; why do I believe it; how well do I practice it?

One of my fundamental beliefs is that success in life is measured not in material things but in character, and my idea of character is best expressed by St. Paul’s statement that,

The greatest thing in the world is love, which consists of the virtues of patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness.

I believe that the purpose of my life should be to strive daily for this type of character and that there is a supreme power which I can use to aid me in this struggle, if I make way for it by freeing my mind of harmful thoughts. I believe that with these characteristics everything else falls into place, and one cannot help serving God and man. I also believe with Browning that all service ranks the same with God. Power for good is universal and is, therefore, in each one of us, no matter what our abilities may be. I find that these beliefs have come to me through the influence of people I have known and people who have left us a heritage in their writings.

In my home I learned that one should strive constantly to improve. My father used to say that there was no one so ignorant or so intellectual that he could not learn something from him. This possibility for influence is very real. I shall never forget a little old Irish maid in the hospital, whom when I protested her getting up early Sundays to do part of her work before church replied, “I should not be worthy of going to Mass if I neglected my duty.” Another time when things were difficult for me, she told me that since she did not know what to pray for, she’d just ask God to give me whatever I needed. Whether it was direct answer to prayer or the calmer state of mind her faith gave me, the difficulties dissolved.

From one friend in particular and from the physically handicapped patients and employees with whom I work, I have learned that happiness is not dependent on circumstance but on a state of mind I can control by my habits of thought. From then, as from Browning, I know that the common problem is not to fancy what were fair in life, provided it could be, but finding first what may be, then finding how to make it fair up to our means. In this daily struggle to make things fair, one of the most helpful tricks I have evolved is repeating favorite quotations while falling asleep and not awakening. This I learned as a student nurse when I observed that if patients are at peace when they go under anesthesia, they are calm when they come out and recover more rapidly. I find that when I use this trick it works; that I do not use it more is where I fail, for I firmly believe that in our daily lives of thought, word, and deed, we make our own heaven or hell.

After my father’s death, I found a small notebook in which he had written only this: “Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the varieties and realities of existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow only a vision, but today, well lived, makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.” This I believe.

“Success Is Measured in Character,” written by Mildred H. Maw, circa 1954. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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I believe I can make it better. I learned this as a new licensed practical nurse.

I had gone back to school at 35 to become an LPN. For a full year, I went to school every day during the week and worked at a nursing home every other weekend. I missed a lot in that year: my children, my family and my life. I worked hard and graduated with a 3.8 GPA. Then I found my dream job at a local hospital.

ER called for help with a code blue that night. It was my first time doing CPR on a real person. He was a man in his 40s, a few years older than I was. He had just dropped at work.

Everything was done right. Bystanders started CPR immediately, the ambulance got there in good time, they arrived at our ER quickly, and we did everything possible. We tried very hard to bring that man back. His wife had arrived. This shouldn’t be happening.

After what seemed like forever, the doctor “called the code” and pronounced the time of death. I thought, “Well, that didn’t do any good. Why did I go through that year of school, so I could stand here and not help this man? How could I work so hard and still not be able to fix this?”

The doctor went to talk to the family. Staff went to take care of other patients. The ER nurse and I stayed in the room to get him ready for the family. CPR is a very messy procedure. It causes the body to “leak” from various orifices. “Would I want my last memory of my husband to be this?” I thought. Then we made it better.

The ER nurse and I cleaned him up. We covered him with a sheet so you couldn’t see the tubes and wires. We washed his hands and placed them where she could hold them. We cleaned his face so she could kiss him without smelling vomit. We put a warm blanket over him so he wouldn’t feel cold. We brought a chair. We gave her time and privacy so she could grieve.

That was the night I learned how to be a nurse. In that long year, I had learned the science, the mechanics, but that night I learned how to make it better.

I can’t always save people — people die — but I can always make it better. I can hold a hand, cool a brow and offer a chair to an exhausted family member. I can make you laugh, rub your back, listen to your fears and ease your pain. I can help make your memories a little less sad and a little more memorable.

I can make things better outside of work, too. I can hold a door, smile at the clerk, let the trucker merge or give my fellow beachcomber a cool sand dollar. It’s the little things that people remember. It’s how we touch one another. It’s how we make it better.

“I Can Make Things Better,” Copyright © 2005 by Christine Ott. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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I believe in humility. I’ve watched my parents build a family restaurant from the ground up. When I was a teenager, all my friends would hang out at the pool in the summer, and I would be washing dishes and working the drive-thru.

By the time I was 14, I’d rolled more silverware than Juan Valdez has picked coffee beans. I often felt that I was supposed to be answering phones at the gym or something else that sounded cool. I was stuck at the grill burning my fingers turning the garlic bread. I often reminded my father that there is such a thing as child labor laws. Then he reminded me that it didn’t apply to family businesses. So much for my argument.

One day when I was fourteen, my dad told me he didn’t need me anymore. He said to,”Go on home.” It didn’t dawn on me for a minute that he had just fired me. Even though I didn’t want to work there, I certainly was too good to be fired. To add salt to my wound, I had to beg for my job back the next day because I needed money to buy my school clothes.

Humility is realizing that the world keeps turning without you. Especially when you’re a teen with an attitude. This was my first lesson in humility.

The next lesson came along one day when I was watching my dad clean the toilets at the restaurant. He told me that his philosophy was, “There is nothing here that I will ask you to do that I haven’t done myself.” I was watching him practice what he preached right in front of my eyes. Humility is doing a task that you don’t like to do and could delegate to someone else, but doing it anyway because it needs to be done.

Now here I am 25 years later with kids of my own and a career as a nurse practitioner. My father’s lesson has stayed with me. I try to show my patients, nurses, and other staff that I am not too important, smart, whatever, to do the most menial task, if it needs to be done. Some people think I am doing this to show off or make them look bad. I have never understood that reasoning. But there are others who appreciate the effort.

I hope that I will pass on to my children the importance of humility in their daily lives. Unfortunately, since I don’t own my own business, I can’t fire them. That seemed to be a pretty effective lesson for me. But wait, they work for grandma and papa in the summers. There’s still hope….

I believe in humility in our daily lives. This I believe.

“Humility in Our Daily Lives,” Copyright © 2007 by Denise Atkinson. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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This nurse chose the profession out of deep admiration and respect for his nurse grandmother.

He also wanted, in his own way, to be a hero.

Here, Nurse Brian Pace’s story as told to NPR’s This I Believe:

“Anyone can say they are willing to help people overcome their problems, but do they genuinely care?

I guess it would be safe to say it’s my caring spirit that compelled me to become a nurse.

I care about my wife, my family, and my friends. I want to help them in every possible way, and have always liked helping people overcome their problems. I have been a machinist, a mechanic, and a salesperson. No matter the instance, I would always put more effort into helping someone in those fields more than others seemed to. I take satisfaction in bringing relief to the minds of others; this in turn offers me joy. I want to help by giving them hope.

The term hero is often thought to be related to comic books and fictional characters. This is not an absurd relation to the term but remains symbolic in the eyes of most. The world is full of heroes and we need them all. I am a very independent, strong-willed person often referred to as stubborn. However, I am not afraid to admit there have been plenty of times in my life when I have needed a hero to save me.

When I was about five, my mother took me to visit my grandmother at work. She was a nurse at convalescent home in Dyersburg, Tennessee. I loved my grandmother deeply, but when I first saw her in uniform, it told me there was more to her than I was seeing. From that point on I was intrigued with what she did, but never really curious. I just thought the nurse’s uniform explained why she was such a great person, yet a powerful and respected individual. Little did I know that the respect she earned from me and everyone else was because of her mind and her heart. Throughout my life she has inspired me in ways that I found hard to explain until now. I believe she was a hero, and I believe I can be a hero too.

I am now 33 and have experienced a lot through the years. I am married to my second wife Melissa and we have a total of six children, at times it seems like we have our own elementary school and it can be very hectic. My wife also suffers from a seizure disorder. As if our lives weren’t complex enough, a major medical problem can have a profound effect on everything. The first several times I saw her go through this, it broke my heart. I cried and struggled with the reality of it all. I was helpless. Helpless is not a position I enjoy being in, nor does anyone else.

Without regard for myself, I had to carry on and try my absolute best to help my wife. I had to find out what she was going through and why she was going through it. I would do anything to help her overcome this. She’s had this condition for about three years now and it’s become a constant struggle. As a result, I have studied neurology, epilepsy, and pharmacology just to have a handle on what is best for her. I have learned a great deal about things that would otherwise be foreign to me and never thought the day would come when I would need to use that kind of knowledge. I have experienced a lot with her and have tried without recourse to help her get better. In doing this, I have learned that sometimes we have to be patient and let modern medicine do its job, but I have also learned the hero’s position in all of this.

I believe I can make a difference in her life medically, as well as in the lives of others. Having been in some of the worst scenarios I can recall, I know what it means to have a shining light through the darkness. Having at least one glimmer of hope can mean the difference in life, death, or keeping up the fight to survive. I want to give people that hope. I want them to know that things can and will get better. If I can be someone to believe in for other people, then I will truly have a purpose in this world.”

“To Become a Hero,” Copyright © 2009 by Brian Pace. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Did you become a nurse out of a desire to be a hero? To be an angel? Or are these myths about nursing that you’d rather dispel?

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Many beliefs have fallen away from me, like leaves in an autumn storm. It is hard to trust in maternal instinct when you have bandaged a child whose mother set her in a bath of scalding water. Difficult to believe in love when your husband is choking you because he doesn’t like how you washed his shirts. Of what use is  God when you witness friend after beautiful friend die a horrible death from AIDS.

This remains: a belief in the day after, the continuing, the clean up. I am a nurse. I am not a doctor. I don’t try and cheat death. I offer comfort, a smile, a skilled hand. For many days I will open my eyes in the morning and I will have a choice. To find joy or not. To help or not. To continue or not.

And when I come across an old tree I will ask my companions to join hands and try and encircle its trunk. We will commune with endurance. This I believe.

“We Will Commune with Endurance,” Copyright © 2005 by Alexis Sackor. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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Four days before my high school graduation I got a call from my dad telling me to come home.

When I arrived he told me that my grandmother was in the hospital and we had to go there in order to take her off life support.

At the emergency room we introduced ourselves to the nurse. The first thing she did was rip open the curtain to expose my grandmother. No warning. No briefing us of what to expect. Just BOOM: “Here she is, your dying relative.”

When the nurse did this I couldn’t believe how unprofessional, disrespectful, rude, obnoxious, uncaring, and heartless she was.

I believe this experience exposed my own purpose in life, which is to make a difference and to help change the lives of others. I chose the career path to become a nurse for this reason among others. I believe that every nurse and doctor should treat their patients the way they would want to be treated.

Watching how the doctors and nurses acted toward my grandmother and my family almost turned me away from the profession. But after much thought I decided I definitely wanted to be a nurse. I believe I can make a difference in someone’s life just by caring enough about them to treat them with respect and let them know that I am here to help.

Besides becoming a nurse and making a difference in patients’ lives I believe my purpose in life is to make a difference in my children’s lives. I want to teach them to be well rounded. Just like my father always says, “Knowledge is Power.”

The more you learn and know, the less dependent you are on others and the more you can do for yourself. I want to teach them that everyone deserves to be treated the same way you do, with respect.

I believe everyone has a purpose in life. And I believe my purpose in life is to make a difference in other’s lives.

“I Believe Everyone Has a Purpose In Life,” Copyright © 2009 by Rebecca Marsh. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Our neighborhood was the type many of us remember growing up. We knew all of our neighbors. We supported one another in a variety of ways. There was sense of belonging. Our neighbor across the street was a registered nurse. Her name was Claudia. She had lived across from our family for about 8 years and greatly admired my father. As the disease progressed and we tried to keep him at home, she was our nurse on call. Any time he needed pain relief, she would simply walk across the street and administer his medication. Even in the middle of the night.

In 1979, most physicians were no longer making house calls. The difference this neighbor made was the difference of a night spent in agony and sleeplessness or one spent in a more bearable pain level and some amount of sleep. The neighborhood I live in now, the one we have raised our children in, is much the same. We know our neighbors, and many of them have become good friends. When I drive into our neighborhood, still blocks from our home, I immediately feel the sense of home as I move down the street. I know them. If they need me I’m here for them and I know they are only a short walk away. Most of us in this United States, live near other people. Whatever goals we are chasing, whatever the demands of our schedules, I believe our lives and our world would improve if we made “neighbors and neighborhood” one of our priorities.

“Neighbors and Neighborhood,” Copyright © 2006 by Kristie Abruzzo. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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As a girl, I always liked cows. We were a family of milk-drinkers, and my dad was a farm broadcaster who edited a newsletter for dairy farmers, so I knew milk as a food, an ingredient to cook with, and even as a commodity.

But being the youngest of a trio of formula-fed babies, I missed getting exposed to the notion that milk would become a medium of communication between me and my children, someday when I had kids of my own.

My first baby was born in 1968. In tune with the rebellious spirit of the times, I decided to breastfeed, partly because my mother, a modern, liberated woman who had her babies in the 30s and 40s, had chosen not to. In 1968 nobody knew very much about how it all worked—certainly not the people who took care of us in the hospital. Luckily my baby took charge of things on our first night home, with a marathon of suckling and pooping that went on for hours, giving me tangible proof that she was drinking plenty of milk even if I hadn’t seen a drop.

Over the next few weeks I spent lots of time reflecting on my life as a mammal. I figured if the other mammals knew how to take care of their babies without any lessons, then probably I could too, but I sure had lots of questions. Why did I get so thirsty when the baby nursed? (It was like a wind from the Sahara hitting my throat.) Why did the baby’s sucking make me sleepy? Why did my daughter smell so enticing? I had a degree from an Ivy League college, but no clue about what this small creature needed from me. I just had to go with the flow, and luckily—because mammals are designed for survival—things worked out OK.

Forty years later, I look back on thousands of hours spent sitting beside nursing mothers and babies in my career as a hospital nurse and board certified lactation consultant. The process of nurturing young mammals still enthralls me. Lactation science has answered my questions and many more that I never thought to ask, and to me it is still a marvel, the way a mother’s body, which surrounded her baby before birth, protects him afterwards…by providing warmth and touch and a soothing and soporific elixir that programs the baby’s immune system and feeds only friendly bacteria in his gut.

Mammals are successful because, unlike birds, they are not limited to breeding only where they can find food nearby for their babies. Mammal mothers make their babies’ food themselves, and the babies control production by the amount of milk they drink. I believe it is essential to protect this collaborative bodily link between a human adult and her young. I believe that our breasts confer upon us—verbal, techno-savvy humans—a mysterious power to communicate with our babies, skin against skin, no words and no gadgets necessary. I believe that I spent some of my best years living as a mammal, and I wish the same for mothers everywhere, until the end of time.

“It’s Great to be a Mammal,” Copyright © 2009 by Chris Mulford. Part of the This I Believe Essay Collection found at www.thisibelieve.org, Copyright © 2005-2009, This I Believe, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

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