Originally published at National Catholic Register
The following is adapted from a white-coat dedication address to entry-level nursing students at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, on Oct. 5, 2024.
Uniontown, Kansas, is a tiny little town just over 100 miles south and east of Topeka, close to Fort Scott and the Missouri border. And when I say tiny, I mean tiny: Population 293 as of the 2020 census.
Put Uniontown in the back of your mind. I’ll ask you to recall it later on.
For now, though, this is a celebration and an important one — a way of marking the weighty significance that you are beginning your patient care clinicals. It’s no longer just theory and textbooks; it’s real, and there’s a real person with a real beating heart at the other end of your stethoscope — not just another manikin.
Maybe you’ve heard me say that nursing school is a lot like driver’s ed — that there’s only so much you can learn in the classroom or from books. At some point, you have to get in a car and drive.
That’s what this ceremony is about: You’re beginning to drive. You’re taking all that passion for care and service that got you
