Pinning Ceremony

On May 28, the Westminster School of Nursing and Health Sciences had the annual Pinning Ceremony for that year's graduating class. It was an amazing event held in St. Marks Cathedral in downtown Salt Lake City. The family members congregated in the chapel and in a cultural hall of sorts. The students sat in the very front facing the audience. This was really it. I had finally made it! I was so emotional. To think that I probably wouldn't see very many of my friends and acquaintances again after this event made me sad. But I realized that we were moving on, and we had all achieved our dreams - we are nurses! Several of our professors and classmates spoke. There were some good inside jokes passed around, including the fact that Gail Nelson is now "passing the banana" on to one of us to become a nursing professor (Gail hates the smell of bananas and banned them from her classrooms). After the speaking, our names were called and we were pinned by one of our professors. I was pinned by Sherri Tesseyman, an amazing woman who teaches Advanced Med-Surg Nursing and Intro to Nursing. Then we all stood and read the Pledge of Nursing:

I solemnly pledge to practice my profession faithfully

and conscientiously. I will do all within my power to

maintain and elevate the standards of my profession

and to continue to pursue my educational endeavors

throughout my nursing career. Using the knowledge

I have gained, I shall continue to upgrade the quality

of care of my clients. It is with honor that I shall

devote myself to the nursing profession.

We then walked out the way we had walked in, with

bagpipes accompanying us (!!!) I was SO happy!!

"Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive

devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work; for

what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared

with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one

of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of fine arts." - Unknown

Afterwards, there was a reception in the cultural hall. These are my very close nursing buddies. From left to right, Des Faull, Channa Goodman, Amy Cummings, me, Natalie Sanaty-Nya.

"To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do,

in spite of all we go through, is to be a nurse." - Rawsi Williams

"Nursing is viewed as a caring practice whose science is guided by moral art

and ethics of care and responsibility." - Patricia Benner