Sherri Grady has been a Nurse at Sick Kids Hospital for the past ten years and has also completed several missions with Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders. We have tremendous respect for those who work in the business of saving lives but Sherri also provides us with insight into the nursing industry that forces us to look at the career in a new and fascinating light.

What does a typical Thursday look like for you, starting from when you wake up – to heading to bed?
As both a shift worker and humanitarian the word typical is never used when discussing my schedule. One guarantee is that my day will start out with a serious hit of caffeine. Routine can be overrated, I love not knowing what is in store for me every day

What was your first job out of school?
When I graduated from McMaster University’s nursing program the only job I applied for was at the Toronto Hospital for Sick Children, talk about betting all your money on one horse. Luckily I was hired onto one of the surgical units, where I learned more in that first year of my nursing career than I have in the next ten.

What are the 3 skills you require most to do your job well?
You can’t survive as a nurse without adaptability, creativity and patience. While working as a humanitarian with Doctors Without Borders I mastered these three qualities in countries where both the culture and the languages have been foreign to me.

What do you love most about your career?
My career has been so diverse, I love that my nursing career has taken me around the world from here in Canada, to Australia, to the middle of Africa. Eleven years into my career and I am still challenged, I am still growing and learning. Many people look at nursing as the type of career where we are always giving, but I feel that I have received so much more from the families I have worked with. It is such a privilege and honor to be invited into people’s lives and to be able to help them find their way through some of their most difficult times.

Do you have any warnings?
The one piece of advice I have for people looking for a career in nursing is to not be afraid to make you own path. Nursing isn’t what it was in our grandparent’s day, and for the adventurous spirits, the timing couldn’t be more perfect for nursing pioneers. Who would have ever thought that when I became a nurse I would have the opportunity to provide healthcare in some of the most interesting and neglected places in the world?

If you could try a different career on for a year, what would it be?
I would love to be a travel writer. How fantastic to travel to unknown and exotic places for a living and to have someone else pay for it!