Why I Learn About Myself As A Nurse

Compassion, commitment, courage; three words that I would associate with the role of being a nurse. By going into nursing I believe that I will be able to make a difference, even changing one life for the better is far more rewarding than anything I could ever imagine. I have always admired the role nurses play in the lives of so many, not only patients, but also the families of those in their care. I believe that it is essential for a nurse to be able to listen and communicate with not only their patients but also those around them.

Nearing the end of my shift in the Emergency Department, I was requested to accompany a patient while the nurse readied the discharge papers. Upon entering the bay, I met a very small and fragile patient who was anxious to go home. Conflicted between my primary duties and responsibilities to complete training for two inexperienced volunteers, I decided to put forth my interests in teaching by demonstrating compassionate care to my trainees. Although the patient repeatedly refused my assistance, I gave my best effort to calm her as I cloaked a warm blanket around her. As I listened to her confide in me of all of her hospital anxieties, I was shocked from the lack of quality care she had received which made her feel more sick after the first

It is not a crime to dream. Every individual sets high exceptions for what career they want. Some dream of becoming the President of the United States of America, a scientist, or even a therapist. I want a career where I can make an impact on the world. My whole life revolves around wanting to work in the medical field. My dream is becoming a nurse practitioner. I want to help care for people, their families, and to work in the field where everyday is different. I want to hold the family members hands and tell them that everything is alright. I not only want to make a difference in the lives of my patients, i also hope to make a difference in the nursing and medical field in general. to achieve the dream of becoming a nurse practitioner, I must drop the habits that hold me back and slow me down right now. Bad habits not only slow my progress my habits but also keep me from moving forward. Giving up too soon, my lack of focus, and my perfectionism hold me back in everyday life.

At this moment in time I am unsure of the nursing role that I am seeking, I am learning more about family nurse practitioner and acute care nurse practitioner as the days go by. Each field has its benefits, and whether I choose to go with FNP or Acute care I know that I will be making a positive difference in the field of nursing. Although I am a little bit unsure at this time, I feel that I am leaning more towards acute care. I love the fact that a nurse practitioner can work in many different specialties like being a nurse practitioner midwife, to working in the emergency department or even working at a clinic in a rural area, the possibilities for nurse practitioners are endless and I am very grateful to be in this program. Working at the hospital provides exposure to many different ailments, and being able to focus on one specific ailment and treat it is where my interest is in. I find the cardiac system to be complex and interesting, arterial lines, chest tubes, and hemodynamics are very interesting to me.

Vital observations were carried out efficiently, they were recorded every 15 minutes and a cardiac monitor was attached to continuously monitor for any deterioration. As a student nurse I assisted by recording vital observations using NEWS and assessing consciousness by using the Glasgow coma scale to ensure there were no signs of brain trauma (Le Roux, Levine and Kofke, 2013). In line with the NMC, my mentor supervised and countersigned my observations (NMC, 2011b). I promoted good patient safety as deterioration would be recognised early and appropriate care provided. Throughout the treatment process I witnessed and provided person centred care. Nursing and medical staff continuously checked patient comfort and obtained consent for treatment being provided.

A patient is a human being. Illness disturbs biological, social, psychological elements that make the patient human. It is not enough to centre and diagnoses and decisions on scientific data and empirical fact; medicine is about much more. The focus of this paper is to make the argument that the practice of medicine is a discipline that requires human empathy as well as scientific data and empirical fact to establish diagnoses with emphasis on five components of the physician-patient relationship: patient’s experience of illness, physician-patient communication, and proficiency of end of life care, medical ethics and spiritual growth. This position will be supported through the film “Wit (Nichols & Brokaw, 2002)” through the character Vivian Bearing 's revelation that illustrates a patient’s struggle with death and in the process exposes the distinction between medicine and science.

In the world that we live in today, many people would find it difficult to imagine living in a world where medicine and treatment are not readily available. The replacement of religious explanations to medical and scientific explanations has become a means of social control. If a person is in pain, they can easily set up an appointment with a doctor and receive some sort of medical diagnosis. However, there are certain instances where a problem has not been medicalized, or recognized as a medical problem, and their issue will be dismissed completely. The movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest delves into the idea of medicalization and how it can be used for the good, or for the bad, in terms of the “sick role.” Medicalization in the

I knew I could be a nurse when I watched blood ooze from my brother’s face. His eyes dripping tears, and body shaking from being scared, he did not know what to do. I however, did not flinch once when I wiped the blood off his small face and hands. He was just two and I remember thinking how I had to fix him. I had to make sure his nose, his forehead, and the of side of his face was okay. I did not think twice about touching blood, or how his whole nose was black and blue. In that moment I was selfless. I chose nursing because I am capable of putting others before me. I am selfless enough to understand what it means to be a nurse, and have to be a mother, a daughter, and a whole family in a patient’s time of need. I am independent, and strong enough to deal with challenges and make the right decisions. In my soul I know I am meant to help people and fix their hurting and sadness. I chose being a nurse, because I am

ADHD, defiance disorder, pregnancy, these are just few of the things medicalized in the West (Davies 1995). With the rising prestige of Doctors in the 19th century, came a widening of the gap of knowledge between Doctors and the general population (Davies 1995). Doctors have kept a sort of lock on medical knowledge, enabling them to medicalize all sorts of “issues” aided by the idea of the medical mystique. But with the emergence of medicalization and cures that are being searched for by Doctors, a new problem has arisen. This fixation on curing illnesses has led to Doctors viewing patients as experiments and not as human beings, this is seen especially in technologically advanced societies as exemplified in the movie Wit. In addition to this new problem, there are clear establishments of hierarchy between medical professionals such as Doctors and nurses as well as the emotional detachments with the patients which can lead to patients feeling left out and alone.

Going back to when I was a novice nurse, I was nervous, scared, afraid of making medication error, charting errors or fail to recognized patients worsening symptoms. These fears, made me vigilant, focused and kept me on my toes at all times. No matter which part of nursing I ended up as I grew up the from medical surgical nursing to stepdown unit nursing to intensive care nursing, I felt those fears in every step of my growth and they helped me be a better nurse for my pateints. Today, I am in the advanced practitioner program to become a nurse practitioner who is responsible for: interviewing, assessing, diagnosing, counseling and treating patients. To provide safe and quality healthcare, I am expected to have good critical thinking and decision making abilities (Maten-Speksnijder, Grypdonck, Pool, & Streumer, 2012). while I can recognize clinically deteriorating patients and recommend treatments, I am now responsible for providing treatments. I am now recognizing that facts about being not only responsible for the patient, but also to provide safe care that keeps the patient out of the hospital and out of the ICU. Knowing these facts, I am yet again, faced with the fears of my limited clinical practice knowledge as a practitioner. The amount of information that I have received and learned during this clinical rotation was both exciting and overwhelming at the same time, because I realized as a novice student nurse practitioner (NP), the limited depth of

The purpose of this journal is to reflect on my experience and skills gained during my clinical placement at Ben Taub Hospital. On my first clinical day, I was excited and nervous at the same time. My first placement was in the PREOP/PACU area. I was assigned to help a patient who had been in the PACU area going on 2 days. Normally, once the patient comes from surgery they are only in the PACU area for a short period of time before they are discharged home or given a bed in another area of the hospital. This particular patient still had not received an assignment for a bed. The physicians would make their rounds to come check on him daily. The patient was a 28-year-old Hispanic male, non-English speaking, he had a hemicolectomy. He had a NG tube, urinary Foley catheter, and a wound vac. My preceptor had just clocked in and she needed to check on the patient’s vitals and notes from the previous nurse. Once she introduced me to the patient and explained while I was there, she then asked me to check his vitals. (Vital signs indicate the body’s ability to regulate body temperature, maintain blood flow, and oxygenate body tissues. Vital signs are important indicators of a client’s overall health status (Hogan, 2014). I froze for a quick second. I have practiced taking vitals numerous of times and I knew I could do it correctly. I started with the temperature first, when I was quickly corrected on a major mistake I had made by my preceptor. I HAD FORGOT TO WASH MY HANDS and PUT

In the professional setting, knowing the patient through his or her diagnosis, name, history of present illness, laboratory results or reason for staying in the hospital only contributes to the manner of physical care of the patient. However, recognizing the patient 's spiritual needs such as emotional support, mental positivity, and intellectual understanding of his or her situation gives a better assessment, as well as a trusting relationship between the nurse and the patient, as per personal experience. In the ward, it is evident that most of the staff nurses spend their time doing documentations, preparing medications, following-up laboratory requests, as well as reading through the patients ' charts to affirm the physician 's order. Throughout the duration of our shifts as student nurses, I see that the most that the staff nurses get to be conversant with the patient is when certain procedures (such as feeding through nasogastric tube, taking

The conceptualisation of medicine as an institution of societal control was first theorised by Parsons (1951), and from this stemmed the notion of the deviant termed illness in which the “sick role” was a legitimised condition. The societal reaction and perspective was deemed a pillar of the emerging social construction of disease and conception of the formalised medical model of disease. Concerns surrounding medicalisation fundamentally stem from the fusion of social and medical concerns wherein the lines between the two are gradually blurred and the the social consequences of the proliferation of disease diagnosis that results from such ambiguities of the social medical model.

In fact, there are several reasons why I chose nursing as my profession. First and foremost is that I want to focus on changing people’s lives (Nurse Journal, 2016). As a nurse, I would study the life's value when I would be seeing individuals struggling to remain alive. Since I am fully aware that each life's breadth is a gift, I would, therefore, understand this lesson further as I would be nursing various patients daily. I greatly respect human life, I possess strong values and I am compassionate for empathy and suffering, factors that have further attracted me to the nursing profession. Second, nursing profession allows continuous learning. As I like learning, I would possess unlimited opportunities for advancing my medical knowledge. As such, I would capable of choosing to work in various departments, train to become a medical assistant and as well enter the nursing management where I would grow and mentor new nurses through sharing my knowledge

Townsend and Davidson (1988) also suggested that the term health is derived from the word “whole”, which is a recipient of the healing process. Therefore, an attempt to heal or cure in medical field literally means, to make whole or restore health. It is this idea that influences medicine to adopt a mechanistic approach towards disease management thereby obscuring the understanding of health in human context of well-being, which advocates for alternative or complementary approaches. This viewpoint also reflects in some definitions and the medical model discussed above. The criticisms of the medical by Illich (1974) is that the medical view only deals with the cause of disease or illness rather than the external factors affecting the person’s health. Within different sections of medicine, for example the mental health department, there are marked differences when explaining the origin of illness, disease and treatments.