A young lady, Charlene Teo, who clearly has had it up to here with people belittling the nursing vocation in Singapore, has taken to Facebook to pen a heartfelt note defending her future profession.

She made it clear -- in no uncertain terms -- what nursing entails: Dedication, long hours, extensive medical and procedural knowledge that is on par with the information doctors possess, and most importantly, the need to cultivate the human touch in treating patients who they spend a majority of their time with.

Essentially, without nurses, doctors and patients are helpless.

Moreover, within the short note, the sacrifices nursing students, and eventually, all nurses have to make, is summarised in this sentence of hers:

We spend half of every uni holidays at hospitals for attachments, waking up as early as 5am and knocking off as late as 9pm. During our breaks, we scroll through Instagram, enviously looking at people shopping in Hong Kong, soaking in the sun at Bali or eating good food at Bangkok. We spend our holidays in the hospitals trying to learn how to apply what we have learnt. We learn how to talk to patients, how to talk to their relatives and how to work with other fellow healthcare colleagues.

So, the next time anyone begrudges nurses and what they do, you can refer them to this note: