What is nursing?
Nursing is a profession in which nurses protect someone in need of care. Nurses strive to help patients achieve the highest level of health they can within their capabilities. This level of health differs for each patient and health situation. For some patients, this means they will leave the facility with greater health than when they arrived. For others, this is not physically possible, so the job of a nurse is to make the patient as comfortable as possible and ensure the patient will be equipped with the knowledge and skills to live with their new state of health.
What is caring?
In the healthcare field, caring is the act of assisting people who are not fully able to care for themselves while maintaining their autonomy and dignity. Caring also refers to therapeutic actions such as displaying kindness, empathy, and compassion towards a patient.
Why I wanted to be a nurse?
Contrary to most of the other nursing students in my program, I never had a lifelong dream to work in the medical field. In fact, for most of my life, I was quite sure I would become anything but a medical professional. What opened my eyes to nursing was my honesty to myself. I have always loved helping people and I always took charge when my family or friends were sick. When I researched the profession more in-depth, I realized that I had a lot of preconceived notions towards nursing that made me dislike it; however, I know truly respect how hard nurses work and how much they have to know in order to do what they do on a daily basis.
I now want to be a nurse because it brings me joy. I learn something new in the classroom every single day and am constantly looking forward to applying this new knowledge in the field. Part of me is still scared: I am not as comfortable around certain things, like blood, compared to my classmates, but it is something I try working on every day because I really love nursing.
What do I enjoy about nursing?
I enjoy all aspects of nursing: my theory classes provide me with a basic understanding of the structure of the profession, and my labs allow real interactions with people to be able to practice skills and show the real application of what I learn in class. Before entering the program, there were many things I did when I was sick because I learned them from my family members. Now, I am learning procedures backed up by science and physicians: some of them are similar to what I was previously taught, others are completely different. It is very interesting to see the reasoning behind some of the processes.
What does nursing do for me?
Simply knowing that I will be able to heavily help people in their time of need fills me with a sense of self-fulfillment. My education has also indirectly taught me how to care for myself through concepts such as subjective assessments and self-reflection. In the field, I will also be able to learn from my patients. Each patient I encounter will have a different story — one that I have not experienced — that I can learn from. Individuals suffering from abuse can teach me the signs to look for, patients with chronic diseases will show me how they cope on a daily basis, and family members who lose their loved ones will remind me to work my hardest to prevent deaths from medical errors.
What am I able to offer as a new nurse?
As a new nurse, I still have the ability to freely ask questions. As a registered nurse, I am expected to all the knowledge and skills to be classified as competent. This creates a negative stigma with regards to asking questions because it may come across as ignorance. In my case, however, I cannot be judged for asking questions because I don’t know everything yet and am also not as accountable as a registered nurse maybe. The reason questions are so important is, not only do we learn from them, but they are also a point for self-reflection. For example, if a student asks their nurse why a patient’s vitals are not normal, the nurse might make a connection to a medication that was given earlier and realize there was a dosing error.