Martina Blessing has tried several times to leave nursing, to get a job with less pressure and more money. But each time she has looked around for other work, she been drawn back to the only career she has known for 27 years - one where she feels she can make a difference.
So the 43-year-old mother of three finds herself today shouldering a placard on the picket line outside Dublin's Mater hospital, while her patients in the now closed diabetic day centre fend for themselves for the sixth day.
Instead of working her normal eight-hour daily shift, she is doing four hours on the picket line each day. Does she feel guilty about being on strike?
"Of course," she replies. "It goes against everything we feel and are trained to do."
Does she understand how suffering patients caught in the middle of the strike have been angry with nurses this week? "I don't blame them," she says, "who else are they going to blame but the people on the front line, because they're not going to meet Brian Cowen."
Martina's work as a staff nurse involves treating out-patients who often have ulcers and circulation problems which can, in severe cases, lead to amputations of limbs. Last Friday week, the final day the day centre was open, she and her colleagues handed out dressing packs and bandages to patients to treat themselves at home during the strike.
"I felt guilty because some of those ulcers are going to get worse. I worry whether those patients will even go to their GPs where they might have to wait for hours. God knows what will be awaiting us when we go back."
Pulling on a cigarette, Martina says her colleagues on the picket line are adamant they will not go back to work until the current talks reach a resolution.
"I really feel that they probably thought that nurses for some reason were so guilt-ridden that they wouldn't take to the picket lines but I think they under-estimated our anger," she says.
Martina earns £22,000 before tax and has reached the top of her scale. Her take-home pay is £900 a month. She has three children, aged 18, 17 and 12 and her husband, John, is an engineer with Eircom. They live in a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Celbridge, Co Kildare.
"I'm not going to say that I'm not out here for money, because I am. If we don't make this profession more attractive, people are going to leave nursing. If they see they are going to get a good wage for work well done, it will encourage more people into the profession," she says.
Like all nurses, Martina is not being paid while on strike. In fact, it is costing her money as she has to pay for a child minder for her 12-year-old daughter who is currently off school sick.
A spirited woman with a husky laugh and an interest in amateur drama (she is currently playing a nurse in Tennessee Williams's play Portrait of a Madonna), Martina used to work shifts and night duty in intensive care at the Mater Hospital. Since April, she has worked five days a week in the diabetic day centre.
"I used to come off the night shifts like an anti-Christ. And who were you going to take it out on but your family? There was a time when John used to say: `For Christ's sake Martina, I don't care if we're living on the breadline; just get out'."
In the hospital's accident and emergency department, staff nurse and mother-of-two Ellen Fagan has been working unpaid four-hour shifts on this week's strike roster. She may begin picket duty next week.
Ellen (31) reckons that at least 10 of her colleagues have left the notoriously busy department in the past few months for jobs in different hospitals or in nursing agencies.
Even before the strike, the department was renowned for its overcrowding. Nurses held a one day stoppage about four years ago to highlight the problem.
"It's depressing to walk on duty with just bodies everywhere, with patients regularly spending the night on trolleys or chairs because there are no beds in the wards," says Ellen who job-shares and works night shifts only.
Work in the department also brings physical risks for staff from drunken and aggressive patients and there is 24-hour security.
Like many nurses, Ellen has been assaulted by a drunken male patient, and says the job has become much more stressful in recent years.
"That's one of the reasons I would have considered moving on at times. A lot of the time it is much harder and more stressful than I expected the job would be. If the health service was run to better standards, then A&E could be run as it should be. The responsibility lies with the Government to improve standards."
Nuala Haughey is at nhaughey@irish-times.ie