38 D'MENSIONS MAGAZINE D'YOUVILLE UNIVERSITY 39 Joshua Peters grew up in Rochester in a family of healthcare professionals — his mom is an EMT and his uncle is a doctor. He decided to follow in their footsteps in college and took courses to prepare for medical school. But a job as a patient care technician at a hospital in Rochester revealed what it was about healthcare that Joshua was drawn to in the first place — the people. After finishing his four-year degree in psychology at another school, Joshua sought nursing programs that offered an accelerated path to a BSN, and he found that at D’Youville. He started the program in May of 2024 and graduated this past August after 15 months. “From the beginning, I was drawn to the nursing side of medicine and care,” he says. “As a people- person and someone who is very compassionate, nursing seemed like a better fit for me. The majority of bedside interaction in healthcare comes from nurses — and that model of care better fit who I am.” McCrory-Churchill points to students like Sidney Domroes and Joshua Peters as classic examples of why students are drawn to nursing — reasons that aren’t much different than the seven who made up D’Youville’s first class in 1942. “Being a nurse really puts you closer to the action than being a physician or a physician assistant,” she says. “The role is hands-on and personal. It’s a caring role, and the caring philosophies and all of the nursing theorists will tell you — that piece of it makes it so much different from the other professional models, and that’s what attracts people to it.” Nursing is the nation’s largest healthcare profession with nearly 4.7 million registered nurses nationwide. The median age of nurses in the U.S. is 46 years old, and while the majority of nurses continues to be women, the percentage of men in the field continues to grow (up to 11 percent in 2022). Registered nurses comprise one of the largest segments of the nation’s workforce as a whole, and more than half of all RNs work in general medical and surgical hospitals, earning an average salary of $77,600 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As for what nurses do, that answer varies greatly. Most healthcare services involve some form of care from nurses — they’re in high demand in every sector of the industry, from hospitals to private practices, schools to mental health agencies, and hospice and nursing homes to military agencies. While many view the profession as an “assistant” to physicians and other patient-facing professionals, nurses often operate independently. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, there are four times as many RNs in the U.S. as there are physicians. The many paths a nurse can follow are covered in D’Youville’s curriculum, according to McCrory- Churchill. The program also doesn’t gloss over the potential negatives of the profession — nursing can be a physically and mentally demanding career, and burnout is a serious concern within the industry. More than a quarter of current nurses report they plan to leave nursing or retire in the next five years, and 62 percent of current nurses say they experienced high levels of stress in their job in 2025 (that number jumps to 69 percent for those under 25). “There is a common saying in the profession: ‘Nurses eat their young.’ We stay away from that. It is a demanding profession, and [students] have to be prepared for the fact that it’s not going to be an easy road, because sometimes things worth doing aren’t easy,” McCrory-Churchill says. “You have someone’s life in your hands. You need to do what the patient needs you to do, when the patient needs it. Some demands are reasonable, and some aren’t. Nursing is a calling. It’s something you don’t do if you don’t love it. And those who love it stay with it, and they find a lot of fulfillment in it.” Dr. Amanda Barton is director of nursing simulation and clinical practice and oversees the School of Nursing’s impressive sim lab. Her students will experience at least 100 hours of simulation — roughly 33 percent of their of their total clinical time — by the time they graduate from the program. The majority of registered nurses in the U.S. work in general medical and surgical hospitals, earning an average salary of $77,600 a year.
