Nurses Week is a time to honor and celebrate all the many roles that nurses play every single day. They are the backbone and frontline of the healthcare field.

One registered nurse who is making a difference in Fayetteville is Ashley Justice. A nurse for five years, Justice’s nursing career began a little differently than many others.

“I was actually a translator in the Air Force for twelve years and I really enjoyed it but as you can imagine, I was overseas a lot. It was time to settle down and find a job that I could enjoy and that I found challenging that also didn’t require me to travel as much,” she said.

There are over 20 types of nursing specialists so for those that are thinking about nursing, there are plenty of avenues to choose from.
Ashley spoke a bit about which career path she’s taken as a nurse.

“Eventually, I decided to go into Psych and get my Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Degree and I’m working as a RN right now but I did just finish school so we’ll see how that goes,” Justice said.

“I started in Neuro and I found that I enjoyed working with the patients,” she said.

“Neuro is a lot like Psych, patients aren’t really themselves. It’s for a different reason like brain tumors or dementia, where as in Psych, it’s the neurotransmitters aren’t firing right basically. I wanted to get more specific and geared towards Psych so I started working in the Psych Emergency Department up at Duke.”

Justice was there for a year and a half and found it exciting because there were “people coming in basically at their worst, maybe they were having their first schizophrenic break or going through some bipolar mania thing like that. We would stabilize them. I did enjoy that but I wanted to work with inpatient after I got my Emergency Room experience.”
Justice has been at Cape Fear since November and said she enjoys the experience.

“You get to work with the patients more long-term and best case scenario, you do get to see them get better before they’re discharged. Worst case, we
do see them back so you kind of see a little of everything.”

When asked about a piece of advice she would give to a future nurse, Justice said “Be open minded because you might pick a specialty that isn’t right for you, but that doesn't mean that nursing isn’t right for you. There are so many avenues you could pursue. I mean you can do labor and delivery, pediatrics … there’s really anything available to you, it’s like a million jobs in the world.”