This title came to me during the Covid-19 epidemic. The nurses did most of the heavy lifting spending hours at the patient’s bedside. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine-“Nurse Scientists as Trusted Voices in Health Communication,” (April 16,2026)

 identifies the opportunity for nurses to come to the aid of a broken healthcare system. The article notes that confidence in science and medicine has eroded.

The authors site that confidence in science fell from 67% in 2016  to 57% in 2023. Much of this has to do with the bizarre handling of the Covid epidemic. I cringe when I recall Dr. Fauci state, “I am science.”

What hubris.

Nurses are in a unique position to halt this erosion of trust. They rank as the most trusted professionals eclipsing that of physicians. 76% of Americans rank nurses as having high levels of integrity and ethical standards as opposed to physicians who hit 54 %

We have a lot to learn from nurses.

This was evident to me when I asked a nurse practitioner to join my practice. She brings in the nursing perspective which is different but complementary.

The article sites a clever ad campaign which addressed the skepticism of the population during the epidemic.

“If your hesitant talk to a nurse.”

This produced 10 million hits on social media.

Unfortunately, nurses have been largely excluded from discussions on health care decisions.

I may have made this mistake as I looked at nurses as heroes during Covid and that prompted the title of my short story collection.

What has not been appreciated is their role in developing and spreading scientific knowledge to a wary population.