After our investigation, Methodist Le Bonheur hospital system erased thousands of patients’ medical debt. Many will no longer have to choose between those bills and their children or themselves. We want you to meet four of them.

In 2018, the massive nonprofit health care system sued her for just over $11,500 in unpaid hospital bills, plus $3,800 in attorney’s fees. In April, a Shelby County General Sessions Court judge ordered her to pay $150 per month toward the debt.

If she was lucky, the envelope contained only a warning. If she wasn’t, it was another attempt to garnish her paycheck, even though she wasn’t even getting one.

Nurses know that every time they take a blood sample, give a medication, administer a blood transfusion, care for patients having a procedure, and countless other seemingly mundane tasks, there is potential for harm.

I still remember, as a graduate nurse, feeling an overwhelming sense of responsibility; that a moment’s inattention or carelessness could cost someone their life, and, on the flip side of the coin, that my skills and knowledge could make a difference, even be lifesaving. Nearly 30 years later, I still feel it.

Last year a friend suffered severe burns after a gas bottle explosion. Amid surgeries, skin grafts, dressing changes and a lot of top shelf analgesia, he told me that what affected him daily, more than anything else, was how he was treated by his nurse.

He needed explanations and rationale that made sense to him. He struggled with the frustration and powerlessness he felt when he wasn’t heard. It would have been easy to label him a difficult patient but it was those nurses who really saw and heard him who made the difference.