Early on the morning of my surgery, I was hurried to a cold, sterile X-ray suite. I needed one final diagnostic test just before a life-changing mastectomy. I was fearful, unsure of what lay in my future. All I wanted in that moment was a warm and caring connection, a gesture of support. But what happened only deepened my suffering. My technician did not even offer her name or an explanation of the test.
“What’s the spiritual climate of your nursing school?” I asked three nursing students over lunch. Mackenzie, Sean, and Ben responded that there was no place in the nursing school where they could talk about their faith. So together we agreed—let’s start an NCF chapter at 
I am a nursing student at a Catholic-Jesuit university, so spirituality is integrated throughout our nursing curriculum. However, we do not have a space to reflect on how to have spiritual conversations with patients or how to process our clinical experiences from a spiritual perspective.
Many parents give names to their children that are unique, or “old-fashioned,” or quite common, like my name (Jane) that appeared along with Dick and Spot in my first reading book! But behind every name is a person who is significant.