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Meet Ashley
Ashley Scott is an author, licensed practical nurse, and healthcare advocate based in Mesa, Arizona. After an 18-year bedside nursing career was abruptly ended by a life-altering seizure at work, Ashley turned to writing and advocacy to speak for nurses and patients navigating a system that often asks them to endure in silence.
Where Care and Courage Meet
Ashley Scott knows what it means to hold life in her hands and what it feels like to lose control of her own. She stands at an uncommon intersection: caregiver and patient, nurse and epilepsy warrior, witness and truth-teller. Her work today is rooted not in ambition, but in responsibility the responsibility to say what others are too exhausted, frightened, or conditioned to keep quiet.
“I am a nurse who refuses to stay silent,” she says. It’s not a slogan. It’s a lived posture.“
Learning Care at Home
Ashley’s path into nursing began long before a uniform or a chart. It started with watching her mother return to school later in life, long after her children were grown, driven by a steady devotion to helping others. That example of perseverance, sacrifice, and service quietly shaped Ashley’s sense of purpose.
Nursing, for her, was never just a job. It was a calling rooted in compassion and proximity being close to people in their most vulnerable moments. Over nearly two decades, she worked across long-term care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, home health, and acute settings. She held hands at the end of life. She fought for patients when systems failed. She absorbed the unspoken weight that nurses carry every day.
When the Body Says No
The moment that changed everything came without warning. A seizure at work led to respiratory arrest and abruptly ended Ashley’s bedside nursing career. Overnight, she crossed from provider to patient, stepping behind what she now calls “the other side of the curtain.”
“My biggest challenge was becoming a patient myself and seeing nursing from the other side,” she reflects. “It was eye-opening. It made me a fierce advocate for change, because before, I too sat back and let things happen to me.”
As a patient with epilepsy, Ashley experienced neglect, dismissal, and tone policing firsthand. She saw systemic violence not as an abstract concept, but as something lived in the body. Unsafe ratios. Bullying. Silence enforced through fear. These were the moments that could have driven her away from healthcare entirely.
Instead, they anchored her more deeply.
“There were many times I wanted to quit,” she says. “But instead of walking away, I realized I needed to be the voice others are afraid to use.”
Giving Language to Silence
Ashley turned to writing not as an escape, but as a form of witness. Her poetry collection Ashes Ashes They All Fall Down which went on to win multiple awards, including the 2025 International Impact Award for Social Justice in Healthcare gave voice to what nurses and patients often carry quietly.
“It gives a voice to those too afraid to speak up,” she explains. “To those who need support but don’t know how to ask for it.”
Her work doesn’t aim to shock or provoke for its own sake. It aims to tell the truth with care. To hold space. To be a light in places where compassion has been thinned by burnout and bureaucracy.
Ashley’s advocacy is grounded in a simple, human hope: touching just one life. Changing one day. Reminding someone that they are not alone in their struggle even if their story looks different on the surface.
Writing Toward a More Human System
Today, Ashley continues to advocate through her writing, speaking openly about burnout, bullying, unsafe staffing, and inequity in nursing. She writes not from theory, but from lived experience both as a professional and as someone who has been failed by the very systems she once trusted.
Her upcoming book, Good Girl, Now Die Quietly, traces her journey through healthcare from both sides of the chart, offering an unflinching look at what happens when compassion is asked to survive inside broken systems.
“Nursing isn’t my job it’s my calling,” Ashley says. “And through every word I write, I’m pushing for a future where compassion leads and systems finally catch up to the humanity we all deserve.”
She credits the people around her mentors, faith leaders, fellow writers, and friends for reminding her to strive for excellence and keep going, even when the work feels heavy.
Looking Ahead, Without Letting Go
Ashley’s vision for the future is not grandiose. It’s grounded. She hopes for a healthcare culture that cares for everyone patients and staff alike. A system where speaking up is not punished, and vulnerability is not mistaken for weakness.
Her message to others walking hard paths especially nurses is steady and sincere:
“Never give up on your dreams. They may feel far away, but keep going. You are meant for great things, and someone out there needs to hear your message.”
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