At Barco’s Nightingale Foundation we encourage men and women to choose Nursing as their profession.  Even so, we recognize that not everyone may be sure about entering the nursing field. We believe that it is important to understand the challenges.
Being a nurse comes with tremendous responsibilities. Often nurses work with people who at the most vulnerable and significant moments of their lives. Nurses must juggle physical pressures, emotionally and mentally taxing experiences.
The most effective nurses rely on their education and training, and their own inherent strengths, including:

Compassion – kindness, empathy and concern in the nursing field.
Dedication – an inner desire to make a difference in the quality of life for another human being, the willingness to become an advocate on their behalf, a thirst for knowledge, and an intense desire to help others.
Advocacy – an ability to bridge the gap between your patients and their health care providers.
Patience – with patients, colleagues, family members and other third-parties.
Learning – a willingness to learn about the newest treatments, medications and processes for patient care.
Adaptability – an ability to change as situations change, to re-prioritize, to be flexible
Intuition – a “second sense” – an ability to read subtle changes in their patients’ body language and unspoken “messages” and anticipate the need for further exploration of the situation.
Communicate – a desire to listen and pay attention to the verbal cues of patients and their relatives and to effectively communicate with your patients and doctors.
These are a few of the important traits necessary for nursing. Not all nurses begin their careers with all these skills; some take years to learn and fine-tune.  But anyone who is willing to continually learn and practice these traits throughout their career, will be a success.
~Michael and Frida Donner