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If you ever wanted to know what hard work and determination looks like, you should take a look at Jaines Andrades. According to Good Morning America , Andrades recently began her new job as a nurse practitioner at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, but her journey at Baystate didn’t start there. Because of Them We Can reports Andrades worked as a custodian at Baystate for five years. While working, she built relationships with patients and staff who encouraged her to stay and begin school to become a nurse practitioner while she worked as a janitor. Eventually, she became a registered nurse and after ten years of schooling, she became a nurse practitioner before recently getting hired by Baystate to work in trauma surgery. In a Facebook post, Andrades shared her journey through images of three badges from each step in her career. From a janitor to a registered nurse, and now a nurse practitioner, she captioned the photo, “10 years of work, but worth it.” For...
Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first Black woman to become a licensed nurse in the United States, according to the National Women’s History Museum . After working as a janitor, cook, washwoman, and nurse’s aide at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Mahoney was admitted into their nursing program. She became one of only four students out of a class of 42 to complete the program in 1879 making history as the only African American to do so. Born May 7, 1845 (other sources say April 16) — in Boston, MA — Mahoney was the daughter of freed slaves who moved from North Carolina to Boston to distance themselves from the heavily racist south. As a child Mahoney attended the Philips School in Boston, one of the first integrated schools in the country. After fifteen years of working several roles at the New England Hospital, Mahoney entered the nursing graduate program at the age of 33. Mahoney completed the rigorous 16-month program sealing her place in history as the first African...