By Noor Abdulhamid
ABU DHABI — Being different is not easy. It never is.
Being different means you don’t really blend in with society easily because you’re doing something unusual. You have to be you. You can’t change that. You can’t lower your standards.
Today I am bringing you, my dear readers, a unique story about a young Emirati woman who has dared to be herself. She has fought with all her power to become a nurse. She wanted to follow her long-held dream of rescuing people from disease and illness.
This is the story of Fatima Ahmed Abdulla Al Hammadi, a senior nursing student at Fatima College of Health Sciences in Abu Dhabi.
Her dream was to become a doctor. She heard about a bridging program between nursing and medicine, but in her second year there was a life-changing event.
Al Hammadi met a patient at Al Mafraq Hospital. He kept asking her about his situation, and he was amazed how much passion she has for her profession. He was fascinated by how well she took care of her patients. After she finished with an initial diagnosis, the man told her that he, in fact, is a doctor and impressed.
Al Hammadi faced a lot of obstacles to be a nurse: She fought with all her energy to convince her family that her country needs her as nurse because here in the UAE there is a shortage of Emirati nurses. Another problem is that nurses have to work at odd hours, often at night. Her family was not comfortable with this at first. Later, her family came to accept the unusual hours.
Another issue is the fact that she decided to be a nurse, not a doctor. Society would like to push young people to the top of our chosen professions, which in the medical field would mean being a doctor. Al Hammadi chose nursing instead, and for a while had to live with seeming to have not reached her ultimate goal.
But she has made the breakthrough. Now her goals are to serve her beloved country and help people. It’s OK to be a nurse.
Al Hammadi always has loved the idea of taking care of people, and it’s a part of her personality. The good news is that she has been offered a position at Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.
“Don’t give up easily because if you do, you will never reach your goals,” she said. “Fight until you accomplish what you want, and it’s OK to be different.”
And being unusual is never a bad thing when you are helping others.
This story was originally published on March 16, 2017. It was re-uploaded on Jan. 1, 2021. The photo that accompanied this story was lost due to the loss of the domain name.
