Nurse of the Week Abigail Matos-Pagán, DNP entered a bright-blue house in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico earlier this summer and was met by Beatriz Gastón, who quietly led the way to her mother’s small room. Matos-Pagán had come to provide a Covid-19 vaccine for Wildelma Gastón, 88, whose arthritis and other health concerns confine her to bed.
Wildelma Gastón asked for her rosary to be placed on her chest and motioned to her “good arm,” where Matos-Pagán injected a first dose of the Moderna vaccine. The Gastón household, made up of five family members, breathed a collective sigh of relief. Though the vaccine had been available for months, Wildelma had been unable to reach a vaccination site. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Data Tracker, Puerto Rico’s vaccination rate in March was one of the lowest among U.S. states and territories despite receiving more than 1.3 million vaccine doses. The rollout highlighted disparities in access to medical services, and the challenges of tracking and reaching remote citizens, such as Wildelma.
With each trip to school or work, family members worried about bringing the virus into their home and the threat to Wildelma’s life. Matos-Pagán also vaccinated two of Beatriz’s children, who are students at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaqüez, during her visit.
“We have been waiting a long time for this moment,” Beatriz Gastón said as she hugged Matos-Pagán goodbye, expressing gratitude for the home visit. To her, the vaccine is more than protection from the coronavirus — it clears the way for the family to be together with her mother.
To Matos-Pagán, it is her latest calling. The nurse practitioner, who has guided relief efforts after hurricanes and earthquakes in Puerto Rico and elsewhere, has made it her mission in the U.S. territory to vaccinate as many people as possible against covid. Some residents of Mayagüez, a city on the western shore of the main island, candidly call her “The Vaccination Queen” and show up at her home asking for help in getting a shot.
According to The New York Times’ case tracker, as of Friday, Puerto Rico has had more than 182,000 covid cases and at least 2,594 deaths. About 57% of the population is fully vaccinated, but many of the unvaccinated are hard to reach because they live in remote mountainous communities or have chronic illnesses that leave them homebound. Matos-Pagán has vaccinated around 1,800 people in Puerto Rico so far, including 1,000 who have chronic illnesses or are bedridden.
In the pandemic’s early days, Carmen Blas’ health declined, and she began using a wheelchair. Blas, 78, was confined to her home, on the third story of an apartment building, which kept her safe from contracting covid, but later she couldn’t find transportation to a vaccination site. In June, her two children, Lisette and Raymond, visited from Wisconsin to help and immediately called the public health officials to get Blas inoculated.
“I usually come back every year and this was the longest I’ve ever been away. It was especially hard as my mother’s health worsened, and I worried I might never see her again,” said Raymond, who planned to extend his visit for as long as he was needed.
Matos-Pagán came to Blas’ home in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, to give her the vaccine. The family cheered the moment the vaccination was over.
“It’s been really special to have intimate moments in someone’s home during vaccinations. You can tell how much it means to their entire family,” Matos-Pagán said afterward.
Mobilizing during a crisis is nothing new for Matos-Pagán. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which cut off water and electricity to the entire island and claimed more than 3,000 lives, Matos-Pagán conducted initial community assessments in Puerto Rico’s remotest and hardest-hit cities. Flooding and debris made many roads inaccessible, blocking these communities from basic needs such as food, water, prescription medications and transportation. Then, after a series of earthquakes in 2020 rocked the island, leaving even more people without housing or in substandard structures, Matos-Pagán organized local nurse practitioners to provide community health care. They supplied at-risk populations with their medicines when pharmacies closed, and teams set up mobile medical tents near overcrowded hospitals.
“I’m hyper and busy in my daily life, but when there is a crisis, I am calm and still. Grounded. I feel like I’m where I belong,” she said.
Matos-Pagán was born in New York City. She became interested in medicine after watching nurses support her mother, who died of complications from an aneurysm when Matos-Pagán was 9. Her mother’s death taught her “nothing was permanent,” she said, which has inspired her to act when disaster strikes and support people through personal tragedy and loss.
Logo of CONCID, founded by Matos-Pagan in 2003
Matos-Pagán returned to Puerto Rico to study nursing and later earned a master’s degree and a doctorate at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Through her work, she holds various titles: first commander of the Puerto Rican Disaster Response Team, and director and founder of the Coalition of Nurses for Communities in Disaster.
Her experiences managing medical professionals and resources during hurricanes have taken her to locations across the U.S. Atlantic coast and the Caribbean. During the covid pandemic, she was recruited to assist in triage leadership for an ICU floor short on resources in El Paso, Texas, and a hard-hit senior living facility in Maryland.
“Not everyone is built for this. It’s really sad, depressing work,” Matos-Pagán said. “But even when there are mass casualties, you can still save lives and get people’s basic needs met. I’ve seen communities come together in the most incredible ways. It’s a challenge, but that’s what keeps me going.”
And, even as she is rapidly trying to get more covid shots into the arms of Puerto Ricans, Matos-Pagán is preparing for the next crisis. Hurricane season officially began in June, and she will be on disaster-ready duty until the end of November.
As Nurse of the Week Charlotte Thrall, DNP, FNP-C, CNE, FAANP sat anxiously waiting in the emergency room at Mayo Clinic for news of her husband’s condition after a pickleball accident left him unconscious and unresponsive, her mind spun with uncertainty. Then, among the health care workers that began to fill the room, her eyes settled on a familiar face.
It was her former nursing student, Lexy Richards. Lexy was now a neurosurgery NP for the Mayo team treating Dr. Thrall’s husband.
Their unexpected reunion was bittersweet but welcome, and the following morning, Richards was at Billy Thrall’s bedside, reviewing imaging and lab work, answering whatever questions they had and doing everything in her power to make sure Billy and Charlotte, whom Richards had known since she was a student at Arizona State University’s Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, were taken care of.
“My depth of gratitude to her will always be tremendous for all the ways she has shaped my life. It has been a gift for me to be able, in some small way, to help her and her husband through this experience.”
—Neurosurgery NP Lexy Richards
“It was so humbling to be in a position where someone who taught you everything you know and who you respect to the highest degree is now in a position of vulnerability,” Richards said.
Fortunately, Billy did not require surgery. But having Richards to reach out to during his recovery was invaluable to Charlotte.
Thrall’s former student, NP Lexy Richards is now studying to become a neurosurgeon.
“Those first eight weeks of recovery were particularly difficult, and she was … I don’t even have the words,” Charlotte said.
Now, nearly 20 weeks out from the accident, Billy is making good progress. And Charlotte and Richards are still frequently in touch — though not always concerning Billy.
A clinical assistant professor and coordinator of the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Edson College, Charlotte first met Richards as her professor. Equally impressed by each other, they quickly developed a mentor-mentee relationship, with Richards serving on the leadership team for HopeFest, an annual community health care event Charlotte and her husband launched in 2012, and Charlotte writing a letter of recommendation for Richards’ application to medical school to become a neurosurgeon, mere months before Billy’s accident.
Richards received word that her application had been accepted while Billy was still recovering in the hospital. She’ll begin attending the TCU and UNTHSC School of Medicine in Fort Worth, Texas, this summer.
“Charlotte and her husband are exceptional people, and she has been hugely supportive of my career,” Richards said. “Even on a personal level, she was so supportive when my husband deployed to the military. My depth of gratitude to her will always be tremendous for all the ways she has shaped my life. It has been a gift for me to be able, in some small way, to help her and her husband through this experience.”
Charlotte and Billy met in Paris in 1984 on a service trip when she was 19 and he was 21. They’ve been married for almost 33 years now, and during that time, they have become well known for their various community outreach efforts in the Phoenix area, where Charlotte works as a nurse and Billy works as a nonprofit consultant.
“… I thought that I could actually see them utilizing some of the things that I had taught them, like motivational interviewing or compassionate care, and in my mind, I thought, ‘I need to tell them later what a good job they’re doing.’ “
It was around 2009 when Charlotte realized she wanted to be able to practice clinically in an independent manner, in order to better serve her community. So she enrolled in Edson College’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program and graduated in 2012. She began teaching for the college as an adjunct faculty member in 2013, then became coordinator of the Family Nurse Practitioner program in 2017.
While teaching in the program, Charlotte also served as a mentor to another student, Jonathan Helman. Like Richards, Helman served on the HopeFest leadership team and was moved by Charlotte’s example of care and compassion, both for her students and for the community.
Charlotte Thrall, DNP, FNP-C, CNE, FAANP, clinical assistant professor at ASU’s Edson School of Nursing
“She’s one of those people you realize pretty quickly is a special individual,” he said.
Helman now teaches at Edson College himself, sometimes alongside Charlotte. He also works in a field very similar to Richards’ — neurology. And when it came time for Billy to transition from recovering at the hospital to recovering at home, Helman was more than willing to provide consult.
“When I heard what happened, I immediately wanted to give back, I suppose almost as a way to repay her for the incredible influence she’s had on my life,” he said. “I’m not just blowing smoke, I quite often think about the type of provider she is and try to emulate that in my everyday practice. She is one of most empathetic people I know. … She has touched so many lives, either directly as a practitioner and through her outreach efforts, or indirectly as a professor who is teaching students who will eventually go out and serve the community, too.”
Former classmates who have remained good friends, Helman and Richards frequently consult with one another about patients because of their closely related specialties. This time around, it was for the benefit of someone for whom they care deeply.
Despite the reason for this, their most recent collaboration, Charlotte feels grateful to have been able to observe them in action.
“They were a gift to us,” she said. “I would never have anticipated having to rely so much on former students to guide us through such a difficult medical situation, but I knew the kind of students they were, I knew how prepared they were and how well they had done, and I knew I could really trust them.
“There were moments I thought that I could actually see them utilizing some of the things that I had taught them, like motivational interviewing or compassionate care, and in my mind, I thought, ‘I need to tell them later what a good job they’re doing.’ I was just so grateful for them, and it really encouraged me and reminded me that what we do when we train people to be clinicians is really, really important. And there’s a reason why we want to do a good job. There’s a reason why the program is challenging. There’s a reason why we are so careful about who we select to be in the program. Because it matters every day to patients like my husband and the hundreds of others out there.”.
When patients present with a specific type of heart attack (non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome) or chest pain related to coronary heart disease (unstable angina), they often undergo several tests—many being invasive—and then they may be sent to other facilities for even more procedures.
It’s time-consuming, it can be confusing to the patient, it can be stressful on the patient’s body, and when combined, can lead them to abandon care.
Sarah Slone, DNP, MSN, FNP-BC, CCRN began to address this problem from an implementation science standpoint in her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) project. She aimed to streamline the process of existing care options from acute symptom presentation in the hospital to discharge.
But ultimately that raised a new question:
Can we determine best practices for when patients need catheterization (an invasive procedure) so that we can establish a standardized approach and identify barriers to care that may exist?
“Any invasive procedure carries risk,” Sarah says. “There are non-invasive options like stress tests, information that can be gleaned from a patient’s presentation and previous lab work, and newer options with CT scanners.”
Now she’s pursuing the question from a discovery science standpoint. Her Ph.D. research examines “care pathways” from acute symptom presentation to various methods of invasive and non-invasive testing, to establish best practices for when patients are most in need of these procedures.
From Implementation to Discovery
Sarah Slone graduated from the DNP Executive Track in May 2019, then started the Ph.D. in August 2020. She is in a new Johns Hopkins School of Nursing program that offers an alternative pathway to Ph.D. for nurses who have earned a DNP. Students can transfer credits and earn their Ph.D. in about three years compared to about five years.
The DNP Executive Track is online with on-site immersions, but Ph.D. students must live in Baltimore. So Sarah moved from South Carolina to Baltimore, alone, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
She considered delaying her start but didn’t want to let the time go to waste. And even before the move, the family living situation was complicated.
“My husband is an interventional cardiologist who works in a hospital. At the beginning of the pandemic, we had to decide if we wanted to live together since he would be at risk of being exposed. Our son is in college, but he returned home because of COVID. He decided that he wanted to remain in the house as well,” Slone says.
Now in her second semester, Sarah reflects that the Ph.D. is not harder, but different than the DNP.
“The DNP enriched my perspective as a nurse scientist, but I learned that questions arise from evidence-based practice, and I needed a Ph.D. to explore that further.”
—SARAH SLONE, DNP, MSN, FNP-BC, CCRN
“I’ve already grown a lot in terms of research,” she continues. “I came in with a specific idea of what I wanted to do and was able to develop my research project with my mentors into something not just fundable, but something that can grow into a wider program of research.” Sarah’s DNP mentor was Dr. Deborah Baker, Senior Vice President for Nursing of Johns Hopkins Health System and her Ph.D. mentors are Dr. Cheryl Dennison Himmelfarb and Dr. Kelly Gleason.
Sarah recommends that, if you are considering a Ph.D. and have a DNP, define your research questions early. “The sooner you can do it, the better you can align assignments, so they build and benefit you throughout the program.”
A Passion for Research
Sarah always had a passion for research—from working as a research assistant in a plant pathology lab in high school to initially studying biochemistry in college. She took some time off from undergrad to have a family and later decided to pursue a BSN. Upon graduation, she worked as an ICU nurse for five years, then became a family nurse practitioner, followed by work in general and trauma surgery. She discovered a passion for cardiovascular care when the 36-hour shifts in trauma surgery became too much (especially with a young family!) and the cardiovascular service was hiring.
“It’s fascinating,” Sarah says. “Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. There’s so much opportunity to improve the lives of patients.”
Nurse leaders who will shape the future of nursing are in demand now more than ever. The fields of healthcare management, technology, clinical practice, and executive nurse leadership are calling nurse leaders considering a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree.
New opportunities for career advancement, a higher earning potential, and professional leadership await you. There are several reasons why the time is now for aspiring nurse leaders.
The struggling U.S. healthcare system desperately needs innovative, highly educated nurse leaders with a DNP to help guide pandemic recovery efforts. As healthcare leaders look beyond 2021, they seek highly trained nurses with a DNP in Executive Nurse Leadership to take on more board leadership roles, navigating the uncertainty that has become the norm, according to the American Hospital Association.
A coalition of more than 20 professional organizations, including AARP and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, believe that nurse leaders are the key to improving the health of communities and the nation. That is why they started a successful campaign to have 10,000 nurses in leadership positions on boards by 2020.
This means that there are now more opportunities than ever for you to hold a position of power in healthcare leadership. Earning a Doctor of Nursing Practice, the most advanced nursing degree available, is the key to establishing yourself as an expert in a specialty advanced practice area, or as a nursing executive.
The anticipated physician shortage, combined with increases in available health management positions, means new opportunities for nurse leaders with a DNP in a specialty advanced practice area. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) projects that the United States will face a shortage of between 54,100 and 139,000 physicians by 2033.
The demographic reality of a lack of access to primary care in underserved communities, an aging workforce, and a growing U.S. population means that physicians, especially primary care providers, are in high demand. Widespread physician burnout, even before the pandemic, is also driving earlier retirement.
Simultaneously, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predicts that the health care management field will grow 17 percent from 2014 to 2024. The result is more space for nurse leaders with a DNP in board rooms, federal or state health-related agencies, or clinical research institutes.
Technology is an integral part of modern healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic only accelerated the commercialization of healthcare technology. There are now exciting and lucrative new roles at silicone-valley-style startups. These businesses capitalize on technologies such as artificial intelligence, telemedicine, virtual care, wearable medical devices, genomics, and gene editing in the healthcare sphere.
Many of these new companies are looking for executive leaders with direct healthcare experience to guide them in transferring novel technology to healthcare. DNP’s with advanced education and training in Executive Nurse Leadership are desirable candidates for growing health tech companies.
There are now more opportunities than ever for minority nurse leaders in the U.S. There continues to be a lack of representation of the nursing field’s full diversity in healthcare leadership positions. In addition to the pandemic, 2020 and 2021 also witnessed growing racial tensions, the Black Lives Matter movement, and a more significant societal commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Our nation’s reckoning with its history of systemic racism is now holding our healthcare systems, government agencies, academic institutions, and healthcare companies to higher standards for DEI. Minority nurses with a DNP degree are qualified to serve in leadership positions. They will lead the charge in shaping the future of nursing practice, driving necessary policy changes, and improving patient care outcomes, cultural competence, and health equity.
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) predicts a severe shortage of Registered Nurses (RNs). Baby Boomers are aging, and the unmet need for health care is growing.
Leadership roles change rapidly in the fast-paced healthcare environment. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that rate of change. Highly-educated, skilled nurse leaders with a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree are desperately needed to help lead our healthcare system’s successful recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
With a DNP, you can help to shape the future of nursing practice and strategically earn a seat at the table, representing all nurses as you help to drive the systemic changes so desperately needed. With more doctorate of nursing programs now available with flexible online course options, and employers looking to advance more nurses to leadership positions, the future looks bright for those considering a DNP.
Whether you are focused on being a clinician, an educator, in shaping health policies—or a combination of these—earning a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree helps you gain the skills and assemble the tools you need to be a force for change in 21st-century nursing practice. As one DailyNurse contributor, recent DNP grad Patrick M. Nobles, DNP, FNP-BC, CNL, sees it, “My thoughts on having a career as a nurse include how versatile and applicable the [DNP degree] is to many career paths. The DNP degree echoes that versatility and can be utilized in many different career settings.”
While 13% of nurses currently hold a master’s degree, fewer than two percent are estimated to have a doctoral degree. The DNP is the highest practice degree in the nursing profession—and more nurses are enrolling in DNP programs every year. DNP students learn to care for patients at a practitioner level as they acquire a firm grounding in policy and leadership, a combination of skills that prepares the DNP nurse to contribute to the advancement of healthcare policies, and improvement of health outcomes for entire systems or communities as well as for individuals.
Here are three ways in which DNPs are acting as agents for change in healthcare and helping to steer the future of nursing:
1. As Nurse Scientists and Policy Makers
A good DNP program will train you in theoretical and scientific approaches utilized by behavioral, social, and organizational scientists so you can learn to evaluate evidence not only at the single patient/client and discipline-specific level, but to also to address issues at population, organizational, and systems levels.
Most DNP curricula provide a firm grounding in public health issues, policies, and legislation. Master’s-level APRN programs prepare students to function as effective clinical practitioners but do not train them to participate in the advancement of health policy or public health legislation. However, as a growing number of nurses want to help improve healthcare on a larger scale, the DNP was designed to provide them with the tools to develop their expertise on clinical and systematic levels.
2. As Chief Nursing Officers and Executive Leaders
A DNP can equip you to step up and add your vision to the “Big Picture” of the nursing profession and to the advancement of the profession in myriads of ways. Institutions such as Baylor University’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing offer a special DNP program designed for aspiring executive nurse leaders. Baylor’s online DNP-Executive Nurse Leadership (DNP-ENL) degree program is designed for working nurses and trains students to navigate the fiscal/business aspects of healthcare and develop their executive acumen. The Baylor DNP-ENL program, which revolves around the Adams Influence Model, prepares medical and health services managers, CNOs, and CNEs to effect change at system and organization levels in improving health outcomes on a large scale.
“If I am going to spend my time to obtain a DNP, I want it to mean something… At Baylor, every class has been relevant to my day-to-day role as a CNO.”
This DNP program track in Executive Nurse Leadership appeals to nurse leaders who want to implement change on an institutional level. One current Baylor DNP-ENL student, Chief Nursing Officer Tami Taylor, MSN, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, speaks for many when she says, “If I am going to spend my time to obtain a DNP, I want it to mean something… At Baylor, every class has been relevant to my day-to-day role as a CNO. I have been able to take what I have learned and apply it at work.”
After being disappointed by another online DNP program, Baylor’s program is helping Taylor to reach her career goals: “I want to continue to be the best CNO I can be and help our nurses take great care of patients through evidence-based practice and knowledge. I want to also make a more significant impact through health care policy and professional organization leadership.”
3. As DNP Nurse Practitioners
Nobles, who is an FNP as well as a DNP, also notes, “The Nurse Practitioner / DNP pathway is increasingly popular and hopefully will become the standard degree for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses. Most nursing programs have phased out their Master’s programs for nurse practitioners and moved into a DNP NP program model.”
DNP programs train NPs who can implement better health outcomes on both a “micro” and “macro” level. With Baylor’s online DNP- Family Nurse Practitioner (DNP-FNP) degree program, for instance, students hone their clinical nursing skills and abilities as leaders and innovators, study the issues facing underserved populations, seek ways to implement new treatment methods, and improve patient outcomes for individuals, families, and entire communities across the lifecycle.
“Most nursing programs have phased out their Master’s programs for nurse practitioners and moved into a DNP NP program model.”
—Patrick M. Nobles, DNP, FNP-BC, CNL
Baylor’s online DNP – FNP degree program is academically rigorous and aims to train nurses in leadership, policy change, and holistically prepare them for what they will experience as practitioners in the field. DNP-FNP students combine advanced courses in pathophysiology, assessment, informatics, and pharmacology with healthcare policy and business, ethics, epidemiology, and servant leadership. A DNP-FNP degree can transform your future and prepare you to grow a thriving practice in family primary care or advance your career track as a public health program director, health policy specialist, patient services head, and other positions from which you can effect positive changes on a large scale.
Additionally, Baylor University offers online DNP tracks for Nurse-Midwifery, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, and Neonatal Nurse Practitioners who want to take on leadership roles in their specialties. If you want to give back to the nursing profession and play a part in steering the future of nursing, a DNP degree can prepare you to take healthcare to the next level and enjoy a more fulfilling, lucrative, and influential nursing career.
I am an Emergency Department nurse and, in the Fall of 2017, I entered graduate school for my Doctor of Nursing Practice degree. I knew it would bring challenges and allow for me to grow as a nurse but what was to come was unforeseen. Maintaining a balance of working 12-hour shifts as the Charge Nurse in the Emergency Department and adjuncting for a university’s nursing program, I had to keep a strict schedule and manage my time perfectly while in school. I had everything mapped out; hours set aside for work and days where I would attend classes, clinical rotations, and meetings with my study group. I had a goal and I was very calculated in my approach. Or so I thought.
In the Spring of 2020, our cohort entered the second to last semester of our graduate curriculum. With the end in sight, it was an exciting time. During the early weeks of the spring semester, there was a buzz that was generating about a pandemic spreading throughout the United States and the rest of the world. As our nation watched cases of Covid-19 begin to ramp up, safety measures were enacted and ultimately all in-person activities and gatherings were halted. Overnight, everything came to a complete stop. Suddenly, no more students were allowed in the clinical setting, and classes were briefly paused before moving to an on-line format. This sudden change brought challenges, worry, and uncertainty about the future to our cohort.
There was no way to make it through 2020 and graduate without displaying the key principles of flexibility, patience, and perseverance. Throughout the semester, and during the early days of the Covid-19 response, things seemed to change every minute of every day. We felt such uncertainty at what was to come. Will we have enough clinical hours to meet our school’s requirements and ultimately sit for our board exam? Will our evidence-based quality improvement projects be able to be implemented at our local healthcare facilities? Will we be able to graduate on time? These were just a few of the thoughts that consumed my interactions with our cohort.
I was fortunate and was able to complete the bulk of my project during the previous term, before COVID-19. Others in my cohort were not as lucky. Many facilities that once agreed to allow students to implement their project put it on hold once COVID-19 arrived. Ultimately, those who were unable to launch their projects ended up delaying their graduation until the Fall term. The hardships and frustrations that resulted because of this delay felt deflating. It seemed that all of the hard work, long hours of studying, and time invested into ones’ career had suddenly been filled with too many unknowns.
But nurses are resilient and we adapt to the challenges we face. Even in the midst of a national crisis where burnout and exhaustion affected many on the front lines, nurses prevailed. When talking with my cohort, after their successful (though delayed) graduation, themes started to emerge. We took this time, where we were forced to slow down, to reconnect with ourselves and our families. With much of society closed or restricted, sharing time together at home or outside in the yard resulted in more meaningful interactions. The focus on ones’ wellness and the often-forgotten self-care that many of us nurses put off was all of a sudden present. It brought our attention to developing a much better work-life balance and helped reinforced our commitment to the profession and finishing our degrees.
Our cohort remained close throughout the pandemic and ultimately held one-another accountable for meeting the goals that we originally set out to accomplish. We made sure to continue our studies, and pass our final university exams. We supported each other as we prepared for our board exams and applied for licensure.
Throughout this time, we built a bond with each other and continued to “raise the bar of expectations” even though we were geographically distant from each other. We challenged each other to do better and to be better. Of course, the hardship of not being able to have our graduation in person and walk across the stage together was difficult, but our perseverance and determination to join the class of 2020 was not deterred. So, cheers to everyone in the class of 2020 and to those who helped fight on the front lines with us!
