Doreen Martel, a writer and regular on Twitter (@doreenmartel), posed this question in one of her recent tweets. I love Doreen. She asks questions that on the surface seem so benign. But if you even start to consider them seriously for even a moment, Doreen’s musing take on a life of their own. I’m sure she is not the first to pose this question, but such questions are one of her hallmarks, and this one stopped me dead in my tracks.

I am a nurse by profession. The enterprise I am engaged in, and have been for the last several years, is improving systems in health care organizations. For me that mostly means taking such organization from archaic paper documentation to computerized physician ordering and documentation systems. Very challenging, and for me, intrinsically rewarding.

Often while I’ve been doing this work, I have asked myself, “Am I really making a difference?” Is what I’m doing ever going to change the world?

When I was going to nursing school the first time (I got a nursing diploma in the early 90′s and went back to school in 2000 to get my BSN), my grandmother supported me both emotionally and financially through nursing school. I was in my late 30s at that time, and to anyone else that knew me then, my life might have looked like a real mess.

I had just broken up with my girlfriend. My career was in a shambles. And nursing school seemed as much like a way out to me, at that time, as a step up. Not that I disliked nursing school, and the prospect of becoming a nurse. It was just that I was so mixed up at that stage of my life that I felt indifferent to the wonderful opportunity going back to school should have meant to me.

My grandma believed in me though. I think she must have seen through the murky swim my life had become, and she offered me a deal. I think she may have thought this bargain might in some way contribute to the world, and the way things work. This was her deal: she would help me through school, if one day I returned the favor to someone else. This was her contribution to change the world. Send a nurse out to do good.

My grandma died a couple of years after I graduated in 1994. She was at my nursing school graduation in Saskatoon. I could tell she was just as proud of me as if she were graduating herself. I know I thanked her, probably many times, for what she did for me. I think though that for her, quite possibly, the prospect that I might help end someone’s suffering, that I might change the world, meant more to her than anything other good (and I’m sure there was much) that she might have done in her life.

So, Doreen Martel, when you ask “can one person change the world”, I think, “Yes, I might.” I also think that my grandma certainly did.

Gerry Wieder also regularly posts on Twitter @GerryWiederRN. Follow him there for tweets on healthcare and on life.