Breakdown of Da infermiere, devi avere molta pazienza.
avere
to have
molto
a lot of / much
dovere
must
da
as a (child/teenager), when one was
Questions & Answers about Da infermiere, devi avere molta pazienza.
Why use da here instead of come to mean "as a"?
When you are expressing the role someone actually holds (like a profession or a stage in life), Italian uses da followed directly by the noun. If you said come un infermiere, it would mean "like a nurse" (comparing someone who isn't a nurse to one). Notice that you also drop the article completely—it is just da infermiere, not da un infermiere.
Would the sentence change if the nurse was female?
Why is it molta pazienza and not molto pazienza?
In this sentence, molto (a lot of) is acting as an adjective describing the noun pazienza (patience). Since pazienza is feminine singular, the adjective must change its ending to agree, becoming molta. You only keep molto unchanged when it acts as an adverb modifying a verb, like in lavori molto (you work a lot).
Is the subject pronoun tu missing before devi?