By Terri Schmitt, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP, Executive Director
“Work more and better the coming year than the previous year.”
— Mary Eliza Mahoney, first licensed Black nurse (1845–1926)
I didn’t just choose nursing… over time, nursing chose me. Nursing set me on a trail of raw experience and deep connection, stretching my limits and shaping who I am. Each step led somewhere new, sometimes steep, often uncertain, but always meaningful.
I officially became a nurse in 1995, white cap literally in hand, but the journey began much earlier. In high school, during a shadowing experience in advanced biology, I followed a neonatologist through the NICU, captivated by the science of life. What stayed with me, though, was not the physician, it was the nurses. Their steady presence, clinical intuition, and connection to families in fragile moments drew me in. Halfway through the day, I asked to leave the doctor and follow a nurse instead. One small detour changed my path.
A few years later, during my sophomore year of college, my mother suffered a major heart attack and required open-heart surgery. I spent long nights at her ICU bedside watching nurses care for her with skill, compassion, and unwavering commitment. They believed in her recovery. In those moments, I knew I was on the right trail.
In nursing school, I started at the trailhead like many of us did, working nights as a nurse’s aide on a medical-surgical unit. I cared for every kind of patient, encountered death for the first time, and learned from a remarkable group of night-shift nurses. My first role as a licensed nurse was in the NICU, where I also completed my bachelor’s degree and became Lamaze certified. From there, I climbed through travel nursing in NICU and PICU settings, returned home as a neonatal transport and pediatric urgent care nurse, and eventually served as a school nurse… thirsting for further knowledge and drinking up each setting as a new adventure.
Each step in ascent revealed new possibilities and direction. Discovering a passion for primary care and health promotion led me in 2001 to return to school to become a Family Nurse Practitioner. I practiced in rural Missouri, providing full-spectrum care in one of only two NP-owned clinics in the state. At the same time, through pediatric urgent care work, I was tapped to help launch a pediatric diabetes outreach clinic in a region without pediatric endocrinology services.
For me, learning more has always meant caring better and my pediatric endocrinology work inevitably sparked deeper questions, leading me to pursue a PhD in nursing science focused on adolescent diabetes, body image, insulin misuse, and eating disorders.
Teaching became another turn in the trail, beginning in the very program I trained in, then moving into BSN and MSN education, and later into an FNP faculty role with a combined clinical practice in diabetes. Step by step I continued the climb, helping to build a nurse practitioner program from the ground up… designing curriculum, innovating assessment, mentoring future clinicians. Watching learners find their footing remains one of the greatest privileges of my career. These steps carried me into academic leadership as professor, associate dean, and dean. And through every climb and descent, I never left practice—because patients are, and always will be, the reason.
Then, as if every step had been preparing me for it, NPACE entered my life.
Leading NPACE brings together everything I value about nursing: clinical excellence, lifelong learning, and advancing nurse practitioners at every stage of their careers. NPACE represents the full arc of this profession, from education, to practice, to lifelong growth. Because in nursing, learning never stops.
Looking back, a few lessons rise above the rest.
Nursing is hard. It is raw, real, and deeply human. We meet people at their most vulnerable, witnessing profound loss and extraordinary joy. What patients give us is trust, we give in return as our commitment to walk beside them.
This profession demands much, but it is ours. We own it. Nursing evolves because of us, through us, and only by our work. Progress, from licensure compacts to full practice authority, comes from nurses who keep climbing, advocating for patients and for each other.
This Nurse’s Month, I celebrate not only my journey, but the journeys of every nurse, every student, and every future nurse. Thank you for choosing this path, for showing up when the climb is steep, and for committing to something bigger than yourselves.
This is not a profession of fame or fortune, but it is one of purpose and paths to new adventures.
And for any human, work with meaning… there is no greater work than that. .