One of the toughest professions around is nursing. It takes so much physical and emotional strength.

It has also been one of the most under-appreciated professions, and many speculate that it’s because women predominately make up the nursing ranks. Similar to teaching, this job has been notoriously underpaid.

Lately, the realization that a nursing shortage is killing this country’s health care system (and will only get worse as the nation ages), has led to increases in nurses’ paychecks, and some upgrades in working conditions.

Beating the drum for nurses, and getting them a bit more respect, has been the tireless Cheryl L. Johnson.

She helped found the United American Nurses that today has 100,000 members across the country.

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Mrs. Johnson continued in her job as an emergency-room nurse at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor even as she led Michigan’s largest nurses’ union and then the UAN. She became a national spokeswoman for such concerns as a shortage of nurse, staffing ratios and workplace safety.”

You see, nurses are constantly asked to work ridiculous hours and this at a time when their jobs seem to get tougher and tougher. A nurse I know says the obesity rate increases in this country have meant fatter and fatter patients, and nurses struggling to lift and move them. There is equipment today making some of their job easier, but the bottom line is nurses are on the front line of health care in the United States and we need to give them all the props we can muster.

And definitely a big round of props for Cheryl who died of a ruptured brain aneurysm last week.