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20 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 1 T o mark nurses week 2021, after more than a year of Covid-19 tumult and the most chal- lenging nursing of our lifetimes, Cathy Kennedy, RN and president of California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organiz- ing Committee and vice president of National Nurses United spoke with Trish Gonzalez, RN and a member of National Nurses United's nursing practice department, to reflect on the state of the nursing profession. Kennedy has been a registered nurse for 41 years and is currently working as a staff nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit. Gonzalez has been a registered nurse for 24 years, working primarily in pedia- trics. As a member of National Nurses United's nursing practice department, she monitors, studies, defends, and advocates for the integrity of the nursing scope of practice and the profession. Their discussion happened on May 6, 2021 on Facebook, and the video can be found on National Nurses United's Facebook page. The following is excerpted from that discussion. Trish Gonzalez (TG): Tonight we're going to discuss: the past, pres- ent, and future of the state of the nursing profession. Today is the first day of Nurses Week after a watershed year for nurses, so it seems like a good time to give our assessment of that. Cathy Kennedy (CK): Yes, it's true, Trish. Unfortunately, I'd say the state of nursing could be a bit grim unless we nurses take matters into our own hands. Let me first acknowledge why most of us nurses became nurses: Because we care and want to help people. It is who we are, wanting to help make people's lives better. Nursing is such a perfect profes- sion for us to fulfill that life mission. We can spend time with people and at the same time be challenged by one of the most scientifically challenging and holistic professions you will find. But we nurses do not practice our profession in a vacuum. There is an entire political and economic landscape within which we prac- tice. Unfortunately, here in the United States, that landscape is a capitalistic, money-driven system where the priority is usually maxi- mizing the bottom line—regardless of whether the employer is for profit or nonprofit—and not the actual provision of health care. TG: It's really profound, Cathy, to consider that, as nurses, we're already fighting an uphill battle within a system that has a com- pletely different objective, to make money, than our goal as health care providers. It really clarifies, for me, why we are seeing the Nursing at a Crossroads The health care industry is looking to exploit Covid-19 by making permanent the crisis standards of care forced upon us. It's up to nurses to collectively defend our profession.