Stories

I see my role as being the quiet guardian of the patient, watching, adjusting, keeping them safe in one of the most vulnerable moments of their life.

When you finally get to leave, you think about the faces you saw that day—the people you wanted to help more but couldn’t. The patient who was scared and needed someone to sit with them, but you had five other rooms to check. The one who wanted to tell you a story, but you were already halfway out the door to handle something urgent.

"In wound care, I treat the whole person, not just the wound. On any given day, I care for diabetic foot ulcers, surgical wounds, and painful skin fold infections, just to name a few. But my favorite cases are ostomies.

For Liz Donnelly, a midwife at Kaiser in Northern California, becoming a midwife was never just a job—it was a calling that brought together her passion for social justice with caring for people directly.