LYNN — Nurses Appreciation Week, which ended Thursday, occurs every year from May 6 to May 12, honoring and thanking nurses for their hard work and dedication to their patients.
The creation of modern nursing is credited to Florence Nightingale, who worked as a professional nurse during and after the Crimean War in the 1850s.
As a nursing manager on the frontlines, Nightingale introduced hygiene protocols and other measures that helped reduce infections and deaths in battlefield hospitals.
The International Council of Nurses established May 12 — Nightingale’s birthday — as International Nurses Day, in 1974.
The American Nurses Association (ANA) then declared this a week-long celebration in 1994, creating the first National Nurses Week in the country.
The Item spoke with two nurses at Lynn Community Health Center (LCHC), Aishetu Abubakar and Lori Stevens, to discuss their work and passion for their patients.
Abubakar has been a nurse for nearly 10 years and has been at LCHC for two years. When she first went to college, Abubakar said she did not know what she wanted to do. Her advisor at UMass Boston knew she liked to help people and encouraged her to apply to nursing school.
“I love helping people, so I decided to try nursing and I love it,” Abubakar said. “One has to love it to do it. It’s not one of those jobs that you can just cruise through and just do– you really, really have to love it. It’s one of those careers where your heart has to be in it.”
Abubakar started working at LCHC right when COVID-19 hit. Although it has been chaotic, she said the dedicated staff at LCHC make it the best.
“They go above and beyond for their patients, regardless of COVID or not,” Abubakar said.
Abubakar said her work as a nurse has been fulfilling, because when she started at LCHC she was grateful to have a job – as many others were losing their jobs – and she got to help so many people in the community during such an unprecedented and unpredictable time.
She works in primary health and sees around 15 to 20 patients a day, working with two to four providers for anything except for OB-GYN.
Abubakar loves working with people and being a nurse so much that she now holds a Master of Public Health degree, which she said will help her understand her patients more.
“I love my job and I love providing care,” Abubakar said. “I worked in Boston as a school nurse, but I feel like LCHC is where I need to be.”
Abubakar moved to Lynn in 2003 and has been a patient at LCHC since then; she said it’s amazing to have done a 360 to now work there and to be able to give back to the community that helped her.
Stevens has been a nurse for 30 years, recently joining LCHC about two months ago as the director of nursing.
Stevens also received her nursing degree from UMass Boston and worked at Harvard Vanguard before transitioning to LCHC.
Having an interest in science, Stevens began as a lab-technician. She decided to pursue nursing when she realized there was a connection between being a lab-technician and a nurse. Both studied medicine; a lab technician just didn’t have patients.
“I went on to become a nurse because I wanted to have an impact with patients,” Stevens said. “It’s been amazing.”
The nursing field suits so many people because there are so many different avenues and focuses to work in, Stevens said.
Starting out by spending 10 years in labor and delivery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, which she described as being her first love, Stevens then decided to transition into other areas in the field.
“I have friends that I went to nursing school with and we all do something different,” Stevens said. “One of my best friends does cancer; she does bone marrow transplant, which is super specialized, and my other friend did all this work in Haiti after the hurricane. So literally anything you’re interested in, nursing can take you there.”
Before LCHC, Stevens was managing urgent care centers, which had to transition to focusing 100 percent on respiratory care when the pandemic hit.
When businesses were shutting down, urgent cares remained open and Stevens said she worked everyday for six months.
“It was a lot. I was really, really fried,” Stevens said. “In urgent care, we started seeing people with respiratory illness around February 2020, before people really knew what was happening.”
Stevens loves working at LCHC because one of her passions is working in the community.
“Being one-on-one with patients and seeing them take the next step towards a healthier lifestyle, whether it’s in crisis or not in crisis, or understanding and getting the education that they need to be able to participate in their care, those are all the things that really get me excited to get up and go to work in the morning,” Stevens said. “I’m thrilled to be at LCHC and I’ll tell you, it has some of the hardest working and most dedicated people working there who are on point with the mission.”
Stevens said she sometimes has to pinch herself because she loves her career, the community, the work that Lynn and LCHC is doing, and is happy she decided to be a nurse.
Allysha Dunnigan can be reached at [email protected].
