Anna Conti of Saugus and Rachel Nazzaro of Swampscott were among the sophomore nursing students at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, who gathered in the Abbey Church on campus for a blessing before they began their first clinical placements. The Blessing of the Hands Ceremony, held on Jan. 24, is a college tradition that symbolically and literally pays honor to the hands of nursing students for clinical care.
A total of 97 future nurses representing eight states received the Blessing of Hands, marking the beginning of their clinical rotations of the nursing program at Saint Anselm. To be eligible for this honor, a student must be in good academic standing and have completed three semesters of a liberal arts nursing curriculum.