Shantwana Patterson has spent the better part of eight years making other people feel better. Room by room, shift by shift, in the long and fluorescent corridors of long-term care facilities, she showed up for people the world had mostly stopped waiting on.

She was a licensed practical nurse (LPN) then. She learned patience, compassion, and how to truly see people beyond their diagnoses. She learned how to advocate for those who could not always speak for themselves. She learned that small things — listening, showing up consistently, treating someone with dignity — could make the biggest difference in a life.

“Those patients became like family,” she said simply.

She is from Greenwood, Mississippi, where the Delta air sits heavy and the distances between a person and a doctor can stretch far and long. She knows what it means to need care and not quite be able to reach it. She watched her father learn that lesson, too, slowly and then all at once.

He was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. The healthcare system that was supposed to help him felt, she said, like something you had to fight your way through — fragmented, rushed, hard to understand. There were moments where things were not explained clearly. Where it felt like they were just trying to keep up.

Six months after his diagnosis, he was gone.

She was still in Alcorn State University’s Master of Science in Nursing program, working toward her degree, when she lost him.

“There were days I did not feel strong at all,” she said.

She did not let it stop her.

Shantwana Patterson holds an Alcorn State University diploma cover while hands extend a graduation cap and an Alpha Kappa Alpha Pi Zeta Chapter kente stole around her in a graduation portrait.

Shantwana Patterson holds an Alcorn State University diploma cover in a graduation portrait ahead of the university’s Spring 2026 Commencement on May 9.

It has been nearly eight years since Patterson first put on scrubs and walked into a long-term care facility as an LPN. She had not planned the whole journey out. She only knew she wanted to help. In time, wanting to help was not enough for her.

“I kept finding myself wanting to do more,” she said. “To understand more. To be more involved in their care.”

The decision to pursue her MSN-FNP degree at Alcorn was not a single moment. It built up over time — of patients she could not do enough for, of questions she could not answer, of a realization that she did not want to stay comfortable.

“It felt scary,” she said. “There was doubt, fear of failure and wondering if I was ready. But deep down, I knew I owed it to myself to try.”

It felt, she said, like choosing purpose over fear.

Greenwood Leflore Hospital, the institution her community has long depended on, recently filed for bankruptcy. In a region where access to quality healthcare was already precarious, the news landed like confirmation of something people there had quietly feared for years.

“Communities like mine need providers who understand them,” she said, not just clinically, but culturally and personally.

She plans to aid communities similar to her hometown.

Shantwana Patterson, MSN, FNP, stands confidently in a professional photo shoot setting against a solid pink background. She is wearing coral scrubs, a white lab coat with her name and title visible on the chest pocket, and a pink stethoscope around her neck. She leans with one arm resting on a silver medical tray stand that holds prescription bottles and medical supplies. She is smiling warmly at the camera. Her name tag reads "S. Patterson, MSN/FNP, Nurse Practitioner."

Shantwana Patterson, MSN, FNP, poses in a white lab coat and coral scrubs with a pink stethoscope against a pink background, leaning on a medical tray stand.

She is not a woman who makes much of hardship. What kept her going, she said, was her faith, her support system, and knowing her father believed in her.

“I leaned on God, my family, and the people around me who reminded me why I started,” she said. “I carried him with me through it all.”

There was no single turning point for Patterson.

“I remember getting to a point where I realized I had already come too far to give up,” she said. “I had to remind myself that I was capable and that I was called to this.”

Shantwana Patterson sits center in a black director's chair, holding a bouquet of red roses arranged to spell "NP," surrounded by two women wearing matching coral scrubs. The woman on the left stands holding a stack of nursing textbooks, while the woman on the right stands beside a stack of nursing textbooks on the floor, including titles on clinical guidelines, pediatric primary care, and physical examination. All three women wear matching coral scrubs with name tags and brown Louis Vuitton shoes. The background is white. The image has the feel of a professional graduation photo shoot.

Shantwana Patterson, center, poses in coral scrubs in a graduation portrait, holding a red rose bouquet spelling “NP” surrounded by nursing textbooks.

On Commencement Day, Shantwana Patterson will walk across a stage at Alcorn State University with a Master of Science in Nursing degree — a degree — she earned the hardest possible way, not in spite of loss, but through it and because of it.

She wants to open a practice someday where patients do not feel rushed. Where things are explained clearly. Where no one leaves confused or unseen.

“I want my patients to feel heard, valued, and confident that someone is truly advocating for their health,” she said. “That’s the provider my father needed,” she said. “That’s who I’m going to be.”

Shantwana Patterson will receive her Master of Science in Nursing degree with a Family Nurse Practitioner option at Alcorn State University’s Spring 2026 Commencement.