Nursing graduate Duncan McKie on community, giving back, and how he wants to be known
Duncan McKie (‘26) never saw himself following in his mother and grandmother’s footsteps. "When I was a kid,” he recalls, “I definitely didn’t think I was going to be a nurse.”
And yet, this October, he graduated with the first cohort of Acadia’s nursing school.
“Growing up, my mom would tell me a lot about what nursing is, what her day was like. Some days she would come home and tell me stories about how good she felt helping out a family. But she would also tell me the not-so-great parts of it: all the emotional challenges, hard hours, things like that.”
After finishing his psychology degree at Acadia in 2023, Duncan gave some serious thought to who he wanted to be and how he wanted to live his life. He found himself thinking back to his mom’s nursing stories and the passion she had for her job, the energy she brought through the door at the end of a shift.
Knowing he wanted to do something hands on to help people, he talked to his mom and grandma more about their experiences and decided that nursing was the path he wanted to take.
Paying it forward and giving it back
Coming from, yes, a family of nurses, but more importantly, a community that demonstrates the impact of support was what led Duncan down the path to nursing school.
He says that a lot of his decision to pursue nursing was, especially looking back at his childhood, motivated by how his community supported him.
Growing up in Coldbrook—just a few minutes down the highway from Wolfville and Acadia—Duncan spent his days playing hockey. As with any sport in a small town, getting on the ice required a dedicated community coming together to support him. Hang around Cole Harbour long enough and you’re sure to encounter a local who can tell you about buying chocolate bars from a pre-teen Sidney Crosby.
“I remember going door to door, standing outside grocery stores asking for donations, and going to local businesses to get sponsorships,” recalls Duncan. “The amount of support the community showed us was incredible. Even just people coming to games meant a lot.”
For Duncan though, it’s not about hockey. Sport was a vehicle to discover how crucial community and purpose would be for him. While there are plenty of kids who see their athletic pursuits as central to their identity, Duncan says, "I don’t want sports to define me.”
First and foremost, he wants to be known as a healthcare professional, someone whose purpose is to help others.
Nursing will allow him to give back to the place that showed him what it means to be in community.
"I was thinking about ways that I could give back that would feel meaningful and would give me purpose. I landed on nursing, and now that I’m in it, I’m so happy I made that decision. I’ve never felt more rewarded in a job.”
The right purpose at the right place
At first, when Duncan decided on nursing as a career path, he thought that he would have to move away from home for his education. Initially, he applied to CBU’s nursing school and got accepted. “Then I saw that Acadia had opened up their satellite program, and I must have been the first person to apply the day after it was announced.”
It was like the stars aligned. He knew he wanted to practice nursing where he grew up, and now he’d have the chance to learn in that same community as well. Training in the community he now works in became even more important to him as he learned more about what it means to be a nurse.
Through his education, he learned that nursing is at least as much about trust and relationship building as it is about the practice of healthcare itself. A big part of building that trust is deeply understanding the people you’re treating.
“Knowing your community is important,” he says. “And knowing what your community needs is important. Those are things that influence our healthcare, especially rurally where word of mouth is so powerful.”
Now as Duncan graduates and enters the world of professional nursing, he feels fully aligned with his place and his purpose. But that’s nothing new for him. That feeling of purpose clicked for him right away after finishing his first placement through Acadia’s nursing school. “I remember coming home and just being like wow, this is what I want to do. I hadn’t felt that sort of emotion, reward, and purpose from something in a very long time.”
“As nurses we have a great opportunity to give back to those people who have already given to their community. It’s a proliferating thing where you help one person and that sort of improves the community as well.”
“And everybody doing the same makes it better as a whole.”