Nurses are patient advocates and handle many of the interactions with patients that doctors often cannot.
Nurses are patient advocates and handle many of the interactions with patients that doctors often cannot. ( Photo: US NAVY/SARA ESHLEMAN/Wikimedia Commons)

The recently ended nurses strike in New York City made this writer reflect on what nurses have meant to him in some of the darkest days of his.

In Praise of Nurses: There When I Needed Them Most

27 Feb 2026 | 06:34
Voices

In my mind they are my nurses, probably because they were there for me in my darkest days.

They were on hand, for example, back when my father was lying in a bed, dying, gasping and doing the death throttle—that awful breathing-but-just-barely sound that someone really should have warned me about beforehand....

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