Maria Weinstein, MSN, BS, RN, NE-BC

I attribute my success to my parents. They were very hardworking people who had nothing when we came to the U.S., and we struggled a lot. But they always shared with me and my brother that the only way to get out of that situation was through advancing our education. If we can get a degree and be professionals and contribute back to society, we will be happy in life. What they didn't want me to do is work in something that I wasn't passionate in. Their ideal was that if you go to school for something you're really passionate in, you will go to work every day very happy because you're working in a field that you really love. So it's not just a job, it's a mission. And for me, nursing is really that mission, so I'm very happy and grateful to come every day to work, whether it's stressful or not. I'm still smiling because I feel so blessed to be here.

The best advice I've received is looking at things not just from an emotional standpoint. As humans, I think we're all very emotional beings, but sometimes we have to take a step back and really ask more questions to better understand where people are coming from. Meeting people where they are, I think, is the best strategy. It really isn't about me and my success, it's about the contributions we make to others, so collaboration is really a key to my success. You really need to be able to collaborate with different people of different generations, of different backgrounds, and find a common ground. There's always something that you can find in common with everyone, and finding that common ground, I think, is really impactful.

Work hard, it's not easy, and never allow anybody to put out your flame. I think in any career, there's always going to be people that are going to be super supportive and wanting you to do really well, but there's also going to be people that are not going to be as supportive of your journey. At the end of the day, it's your journey, it's no one else's journey. Don't allow anyone to dwindle that flame. If you're in it for a mission and you're passionate about what you love and what you want to do, you just gotta keep fighting for it. You have to keep your eye on the prize.

I think the biggest opportunity for nursing is ensuring that we get more nurses involved with advocacy. We're so knowledgeable, we know the gaps in our community and what can really help drive and impact our communities and their health, and population health. We have a professional responsibility to advocate for policy changes to ensure that we improve access to care to our patients in our communities. There's a lot of uninsured people, there's people that don't have access to primary care, and we have a responsibility to be part of that solution. The struggle still remains with some people not really understanding the nursing scope, and ensuring that as nurses, we're supporting nurses functioning at their highest scope of practice. I think it's just the history of nursing and how we started, and making sure that people understand that the nursing profession is so incredibly valuable. We have doctorate-prepared nurses now, we have nurse practitioners that can practice independently.

Integrity is number one for me. You've gotta have trust. I also value passion, understanding, and compassion. I always tell my teams when they're hiring people to join their teams that we can always teach tasks. I can teach clinical, I can teach task, we can all teach that. What I can't teach is heart. You can be someone with 20 years of experience but have no heart. I can't teach heart. So I hire heart, I teach the skill.