Poverty illustration
The vital role RNs and NPs play in ensuring the health of people with little to no income.
Source
Diana Bolton
Filling the gap: Providing low-barrier care as the first step to addressing poverty

When 64-year-old RN Elfreda Murray was 12 years old, she was sleeping on the streets in Spanish Town, Jamaica, scared for her life to go home to her abusive stepfather. Yet, even during that dark time, she would tell herself she wasn’t going to let anyone or anything stand in the way of her goal in life: to become a nurse. 

What Murray didn’t know was that when she would later move to Canada, she would experience homelessness again at 33 years old, while studying to become an RPN. This time, she was fleeing from her abusive husband, and found refuge in a women’s shelter with her son and two daughters (ages one, nine and six weeks). 

 

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