On October 16, as part of the BYU Alumni Achievement Award Lecture series, students and faculty were honored to hear from BYU College of Nursing alum Nicki Broby (MS ‘17).
Ms. Broby has led an impressive career. She worked as a nurse for 11 years in the pediatric ICU and the ER before becoming a nurse practitioner. After six years as a nurse practitioner in northeastern Arizona, she now travels across Alaska, providing care to remote villages with critical medical shortages.
She also works part-time for the National Disaster Medical System and has received various awards, including Nurse of the Year award from the University of Utah ER, the Outstanding Civilian Award from the US Navy, and the Outstanding Representative of Community Involvement Award from Arizona State University.
Ms. Broby has a passion for disaster response and humanitarian work. Her adventures include volunteering on Navy hospital ships, serving in over a dozen countries, doing research in refugee camps, teaching midwives a “Helping Babies Breathe” class, and serving as the medical volunteer coordinator for the Church’s Emergency Response Department. Her thesis work, “Effective International Medical Disaster Relief,” was published in the Prehospital and Disaster Medicine journal.
In her speech, titled “Seeking Higher Ground,” Ms. Broby shared the personal experiences that have shaped her perspective on nursing and faith. She began by mentioning a teaching that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are familiar with—namely, to seek higher and holier places, places nearer to God. Ms. Broby shared a quote by the French poet René Daumal to illustrate the purpose of seeking higher ground.
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
With this quote as her foundation, Ms. Broby shared a few principles she has learned from her moments on “higher ground.”
First, there is no substitute for experience—we learn best from, as Ms. Broby says, “the real deal,” including “the happy and the hard.” There is no better way to learn. From her perspective, some of the best nurses she has met were the ones who had the most experience. This is because, as Ms. Broby put it, you would be hard pressed to find a nurse who made the same error twice.
Second, this life is not without hardship, yet God is aware of us and will not abandon us. Nurses work with people during some of the hardest moments of their lives—they see the most prayers but also the most challenges to faith. In Ms. Broby’s experience, sometimes God loves us enough to let us learn from hard experiences. However, as Ms. Broby emphasized, God is still with us through that hardship.
Third, there is strength in focusing on the one. Ms. Broby advised nursing students to “remember the one,” no matter what kind of project they are working on. She learned this from the one-on-one mentorship she experienced from Dean Jane Lassetter and former professor Mary Williams during her time in the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) program. This mentorship was invaluable to Ms. Broby. She has since tried to carry that mindset of ministering to the one with her throughout her career.
Fourth, remember the ‘ABCs.’ Those in healthcare will be quick to recognize the acronym, shorthand for airway, breathing, and circulation. When administering care, these are the first things nurses are trained to look for. Ms. Broby said that the ABCs have held true even in the wild circumstances she encounters in rural Alaska.
Beyond healthcare, Ms. Broby applies the principle of remembering the basics to her gospel focus. As a nurse practitioner, she sees many grapple with their faith and their relationship with God daily. In difficult moments, Ms. Broby goes back to the gospel ‘ABCs,’ the foundational teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ: we are children of Heavenly Father, and He loves us.
Ms. Broby concluded by connecting everything back to Jesus Christ, the Master Healer. At BYU, she said that her nursing education was amplified by the focus on learning the Healer’s art, which left her forever changed. These glimpses from higher ground have provided Ms. Broby with perspective and purpose in her practice, and they have turned her career into a calling.
Congratulations to Nicki Broby for being honored with the BYU Alumni Achievement Award.