Scribed In Light

I saw a post from my friend Kelly today that stopped me mid-sip of coffee. She shared an article saying the Trump administration removed nursing from the category of professional degrees, and I had to read it twice because my mind refused to believe it. My first thought was, there is no way that can be real. My second thought was, if it is real, then what on earth are we doing.

Kelly is one nurse. One voice. One drop in a very large bucket of people who have dedicated their lives to keeping other human beings alive. And when I say dedicated, I mean lives built around twelve hour shifts, trauma, birth, death, emergencies, compassion, too little sleep, too much responsibility, and zero room for error. These are the people we lean on when everything in our world is falling apart.

And now we are labeling them as anything less than professional.

I cannot wrap my mind around that.

My own daughter is a nurse. My son is also a nurse. I have watched both of them work themselves raw for patients who will never know their names. I have seen them come home physically drained and emotionally wrung out because they gave every last ounce they had. There is not a single part of me that could ever call what they do anything other than professional.

So yes, when Kelly said she was furious, I felt that in my bones. Not just for her. Not just for my kids. But for the entire field that is already stretched, burned out, understaffed, overworked, and still expected to carry the entire medical system on its back.

It makes me think of the words of Martin Luther King Jr: Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. If you look at the larger picture, this reclassification is not just about a label. It is part of a pattern of minimizing the very people who hold everything together.

And the worst part is the why.
Because when you strip away all the complicated wording, the reason behind this decision is painfully simple.

It saves money.
It shortens the list of who qualifies for higher federal loan support.
It keeps the professional degree label limited to the old familiar categories like doctors, lawyers, and dentists.
It pushes the cost of advanced nursing education back onto the nurse instead of the system.
And because nursing is a female-dominated field, the people who feel that blow the hardest are mostly women.

Hubert Humphrey once said, The moral test of government is how it treats those who give the most and have the least to spare. If there was ever a group that gives more than they have, it is nurses. And yet here we are, watching the system take from them again.

Nurses are the heartbeat of healthcare.
The first eyes to notice when something is wrong.
The people who catch the mistakes before they become tragedies.
The ones who hold the hands of the dying, calm the terrified, steady the newborn, and carry everything in between.

You can call it whatever you want on paper, but it does not change the truth.

Nursing is a professional field.
Nurses are professional experts.
And without them, the entire system collapses.

Mother Jones, a pioneer of labor rights, said something that rings painfully true right now: Those who do the real work are often the last to be recognized. Nurses have been living that reality for generations.

Kelly, you are right to be angry. Every nurse should be. Every family member of a nurse should be. Anyone who has ever needed a nurse should be. Because this decision is not just an insult. It is a step backward in a country already drowning in a nursing shortage.

If the goal is to strengthen healthcare, this decision does the opposite.

So to every nurse reading this:
You matter.
Your work matters.
Your expertise matters.
And no administrative reclassification can erase the reality of what you do.

I am standing with Kelly.
I am standing with my daughter.
I am standing with my son.
I am standing with every nurse who has ever held a life in their hands and carried that responsibility with strength, skill, and grace.

We see you.
We value you.
And we are not staying quiet about this.

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Signed,

Tina N Campbell
Scribed in Light
Making the unseen seen, one truth at a time.