🪔 Behind every caring nurse is a long line of nurses who taught them. Meet a few of them, and see how nurses help people and families flourish.
🌲 How a Flourishing Nurse™ grows
Think of an evergreen tree, read from the ground up.
- 🌰 Roots: a current, unrestricted nursing license (registered nurse or advanced practice registered nurse).
- 🪵 Trunk: four steps, in order. 1 · learning how daily habits heal (Lifestyle Nursing). 2 · board certification in whole-person, holistic nursing. 3 · board certification as a nurse coach, who helps you reach goals you choose. 4 · learning how the body’s systems connect (Functional Nursing).
- 🌿 Branches: the Nine Gardens of flourishing (nutrition, movement, sleep, mindfulness, relationships, purpose, community, global impact, and faith and compassion), where nurses add specialties such as diabetes education, hospice care or school nursing.
- ⭐ Crown: recognition as a Flourishing Nurse™ within our initiative, after a person checks each step.
Nursing assistants, practical and vocational nurses, students and every caregiver are part of this family too. Nurses: see the full Evergreen Pathway on Flourishing Nursing™ →
🪔 Who lit your lamp
Every nurse who cares for you carries a light someone else handed on. Here is one line of it, from 🥷 Florence Nightingale to the nurse at your side. 🥷 Each person here gets our Flourishing Nurse Ninja salute: a thank-you, not a title, membership or endorsement.
🪔 🥷 Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)
Lit the lamp of modern nursing and taught that the nurse’s work is to put the person in the best condition to heal.
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📜 🥷 Barbara Dossey, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, HWNC-BC
Nightingale scholar and author of Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Co-developed the Theory of Integrative Nurse Coaching, published in 2015 in Nurse Coaching: Integrative Approaches for Health and Wellbeing, and co-founded the Integrative Nurse Coach® Academy.
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🕊️ 🥷 Susan Luck, RN, BS, MA, CCN, HWNC-BC (1948–2022)
Co-developed the Theory of Integrative Nurse Coaching and co-founded the Integrative Nurse Coach® Academy. In loving memory.
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🌿 🥷 Bonney Gulino Schaub
Co-developed the Theory of Integrative Nurse Coaching.
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🏛️ 🥷 Margaret Erickson, PhD, RN, CNS, APHN-BC, SGAHN
Executive Director of the American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation since May 2000, stewarding the board certifications in items 2 and 3.
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🌱 🥷 Karen Laing, DNP, APRN, AGPCNP-BC, DipACLM, HWNC-BC, CHES, FPCNA
Created and teaches Lifestyle Nursing, item 1.
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🌳 🥷 Elizabeth Sult, BSN, RN, NC-BC, and 🥷 Thomas Sult, MD, IFMCP
Teach Functional Nursing, the fourth and final item.
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🥷 The founder’s own lamp
Nathanael Elijah Smith’s lamp was lit by 🥷 Barbara Porter, RN, his first nursing boss, and by the Pensacola Christian College nursing faculty, including 🥷 Miss Lorraine Bushey, MSN, RN.
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💚 You
The nurses, nursing assistants and caregivers who carry that lamp to you and your family today.
A line of gratitude, not a formal teacher-to-student record or an endorsement. Roles are from the Integrative Nurse Coach® Academy team page, the American Holistic Nurses Credentialing Corporation leadership page and Nursology’s entry on the Theory of Integrative Nurse Coaching, checked October 30, 2026. See everyone we thank on Flourishing Nursing™ →
🌟 Nurse spotlight · November 2026
🥷 Karen Laing, DNP, APRN is a nurse practitioner who teaches nurses how everyday habits, like food, movement, sleep and connection, can help people heal. Tap play to hear her, with sound.
A new nurse each month, chosen from the nurses we thank. A spotlight is our gratitude, not an endorsement of this site.
📖 Garden stories
Nine short stories, one for each Garden of flourishing, showing how a nurse can help a person and family. Tap a Garden to read.
🥦 Nutrition · Certified diabetes care and education specialist
Maria sits with a grandfather who wants to keep cooking his family’s black-bean soup. Together they plan a version that fits his goals and still tastes like home.
🚶 Movement · Rehabilitation nurse
After his stroke, Daniel’s goal is simple: reach his tomato bed again. His nurse turns every therapy session toward that one walk to the garden.
😴 Sleep · Heart failure nurse
Rosa mentions she now sleeps sitting up in a chair. Her nurse makes sure the care team reviews it that week, instead of waiting for the next visit.
🧘 Mindfulness · Addictions nurse
Before a hard phone call with his son, James learns a three-breath pause. He decides when to use it; his nurse simply makes sure he has it.
🫂 Relationships · School nurse
The school nurse knows a first-grader’s family by name. When asthma flares at recess, the plan everyone agreed on is already taped inside the classroom door.
🎯 Purpose · Nurse manager
A unit leader rebuilds the schedule so night-shift nurses get protected sleep between shifts. Turnover on the unit starts to fall.
🏘️ Community · Case manager
Before booking a clinic visit, the case manager checks that the bus actually reaches it on Tuesdays. It does not, so she finds a route that will.
🌍 Global Impact · Infection preventionist
At a family shelter, an infection preventionist teaches handwashing in three languages, and the children teach it back to their parents.
🕊️ Faith & Compassion · Certified hospice and palliative nursing assistant
In his last week, Mr. Okafor asks to hear his favorite hymn. The nursing assistant plays it, holds his hand, and tells the family he smiled.
These stories are made up for teaching. They describe no real patients and are not clinical advice. Each nurse works within their own license, role and supervision.
🌎 En español: las enfermeras que iluminan el camino
🪔 Detrás de cada enfermera y enfermero que le cuida hay una larga línea de enfermeras que les enseñaron, desde 🥷 Florence Nightingale hasta hoy. Un Flourishing Nurse™ crece como un árbol: las raíces son su licencia de enfermería; el tronco son cuatro pasos de formación y certificación; las ramas son los Nueve Jardines del florecimiento (alimentación, movimiento, sueño, atención plena, relaciones, propósito, comunidad, impacto global, y fe y compasión).
🙏 Con gratitud a todas las enfermeras, los enfermeros y los educadores que comparten esta luz. Para profesionales de enfermería: la fórmula completa en español →
Created by Nathanael Elijah Smith, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, DipACLM, October 30, 2026. Educational, not medical advice. The people and organizations we thank have not endorsed this site.
