This piece is part of our first-annual Health Care Heroes series, where we spotlight people doing amazing things in the health care and medical fields. Read the rest of the stories here . WORKPLACE VIOLENCE. BARRIERS to education. Faculty shortages. Burnout. Nurses are the backbone of the health care system (Nurse Dana hive, please rise!), yet they’re also facing an unprecedented number of challenges right now. Nobody knows this better than Jennifer Mensik Kennedy. The president of the American Nurses Association (ANA) and nurse of three decades advocates for the nation's over five million nurses. Currently, one of her top priorities is taking on President Trump’s Department of Education. The agency has threatened to remove nursing as a professional degree, which would prevent nurses from receiving graduate school loans. “These barriers to education and graduate school loans will trickle down to our high schoolers because there's only a small pool for scholarships,” explains Mensik Kennedy.…