![](https://news.uthscsa.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Sterling-Headshot.jpg)
Rachel Sterling, a graduate student in the School of Nursing’s master’s program, has won second place in the Hope Babette Tang Humanism in Healthcare Essay contest sponsored by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation.
Her winning essay will be published in the December issue of Academic Medicine (the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges) and the Fall/Winter issue of the Journal of Professional Nursing (the journal of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing). It will also be published on the Gold Foundation’s website.
Sterling grew up in San Antonio and went to nursing school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She works in the cardiac ICU at Methodist Hospital and plans on completing her master’s in August 2020.
Her essay, titled “Kenny,” is based on a patient who spent eight months on her unit after a heart transplant. She said she had no writing background but “felt compelled to tell the story” of a patient who changed her life.