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As a nursing leader, Ramirez said she is motivated to make her institution a great place to work, making sure staff are motivated to care for their patients, themselves and to help the center thrive.

Although motherhood awakened the feelings of caregiving that first led Paula Axtell to consider pursuing a career in nursing, it was confidence in her academic abilities that inspired her to believe she could be successful at the job.

During her first assignment out of nursing school in 1976, Ora Wood described feeling that she was struggling with “the discrepancy between knowing what I was taught was the right thing to do and what was being practiced.”

“We started getting our increased numbers, and it was obvious that we needed to make some adjustments to plan for our surge,” Jones said.

Before she embarked on a 36-year career in nursing, Kathy Beydler was a teacher.

“I’ve said it a number of times throughout my career: physicians cure and nurses care,” Dawson said. “I was the one who tucked them in, who would dress their burns, who held them, who took care of them and, to me, that was what I was there to do.”