Throughout my professional career, I have enjoyed many wonderful opportunities to work closely with nurses and nursing organizations on healthcare quality issues. But it wasn't until I found myself in an emergency medical situation requiring immediate surgery and a week-long stay in the hospital, that I really understood how much the role of nurses has changed, in part because their expanding responsibilities in patient safety. I recently spoke about this experience at a meeting of the Michigan Surgical Quality Collaborative and shared my observations on the real-world impact that quality initiatives are having on nurses as well as the challenges we face as a community to help ensure that the patient-centered focus of nurses is protected and enhanced.