Cherie L Davis

I attribute my success to my desire to create a better experience for the people I work with, work for, and lead. In nursing, it can be easy to become focused on routines and forget that new nurses are still learning. I believe in taking the time to educate, mentor, and support others rather than making them feel inadequate. Helping develop the next generation of nurses and encouraging them to grow and stay in the profession is what truly motivates me.

Never become so experienced that you forget what it felt like to be new.

Nursing will teach you skills, confidence, efficiency, and clinical judgment, but experience should make you more compassionate, not less patient.

Remember the nurse who answered your questions without making you feel stupid. Remember the first mistake that kept you awake at night. Remember walking into a room and realizing you had absolutely no idea what you were about to encounter.

And when you become the experienced nurse, charge nurse, preceptor, manager, or leader; be the person you needed when you were learning.

Because your greatest contribution to nursing may not be something you do for a patient.

It may be the nurse you teach, encourage, defend, and believe in, who goes on to care for thousands of patients you will never meet.

My advice to young women entering the industry is to be persistent and willing to take risks. Take the time to discover what you enjoy, what you don't, and what truly motivates you. Your career path doesn't have to be perfect or linear, so don't be afraid to explore new opportunities, make changes, and pursue what you love.

In nursing, I think the biggest challenge, and the biggest opportunity, is the same thing: we are being asked to do more with less while caring for people with increasingly complex needs.

Staffing shortages, burnout, increasing patient acuity, regulatory demands, documentation requirements, workplace violence, and the pressure to move faster can make it difficult for nurses to provide the kind of care they entered the profession to give.

But there is also tremendous opportunity. Nurses have more potential than ever to influence leadership, policy, technology, patient safety, quality improvement, and healthcare culture. We are no longer just carrying out the plan of care; we are helping design better systems of care.

For me, one of the greatest opportunities is developing the next generation of nurses and nurse leaders. Healthcare does not simply need more nurses. It needs nurses who can think critically, advocate courageously, lead ethically, adapt to change, and still remember the human being behind the diagnosis.

The future of nursing will depend not only on how well we care for patients, but also on how well we care for, develop, and retain the people providing that care.

The values that matter most to me, both professionally and personally, are integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, growth, and authenticity.

In nursing, integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Accountability means owning my decisions, including my mistakes, and expecting the same standard from those I lead. Compassion means remembering that behind every diagnosis, behavior, complaint, or difficult interaction is a human being with a story I may not fully understand.

I also value growth. I never want experience or a leadership position to convince me that I have nothing left to learn. Some of the most important lessons come from unexpected people, including patients, new nurses, CNAs, colleagues, and even people who challenge me.

In my personal life, I value many of the same things, but authenticity and loyalty are especially important. I would rather have difficult conversations that are genuine than comfortable relationships built on avoidance or pretense.

Ultimately, I try to live and lead by one principle: leave people, places, and situations better than you found them. You will not always succeed, and you will not always be understood, but you should be able to look back and know that your decisions reflected who you said you were.