Hello! My name is Ashley Catherine Wiggins. I started my nursing career as a COVID ICU nurse. I was a tech in the ICU before that. During that time, I witnessed many deaths and I learned what it means to fight for the value of a person, advocate for quality of life and to allow people to die with dignity. These key lessons are the factors that will fuel my success in changing healthcare in the US and overseas one day. One of the biggest obstacles the healthcare field now faces, coming out of the pandemic is apathy. It is my goal to boldly change that in each environment I work in. I definitely had to learn bravery while becoming an RN. I was terrified starting my career as a COVID nurse but I had to choose to be brave and try my best. Sometimes our best was not good enough but we had to have the courage to give it our best again with the next patient. Roosevelt said it best, "courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important." I am currently enrolled in an RN-BSN program to finish my BSN that I started in 2014. I am a single woman, who lives independently and greatly needs any financial aid available. I got accepted into a fast-track program that will allow me to graduate December of this year. While this is very exciting, it means I will have to come up with $5,000 by December for tuition. I recently started a home hospice job and I am excited to finish my BSN this Fall!