My Personal Journey: Nursing Essay Samples

My home was originally in a very poor area of a city in Brazil, South America. My father and I were subjected to social and economic discrimination, no doubt due to a combination of our low socioeconomic status and the deprived area of the city where we lived, which was not a location that was by any means from choice, but from harsh financial necessity. It was not so much a life there, but more a struggle to exist from day to day, never sure how we would manage to find enough to eat over the next few days and weeks.
I think that experience created in me a feeling of exclusion from mainstream society which led me to develop a strong respect for other individuals and families in similar underprivileged situations. That in turn led me to the personal conviction that to be “someone” rather than to just “exist”, to earn a respected position in society, one must adopt an attitude of working hard, taking every opportunity to improve one’s situation, and to focus at all times on a determination to succeed.
Given those attitudes, I believe that everyone deserves to have the chance to make something of their own life, but also to then give something back to others and to the community. An important experience in my own case was that I was suddenly obliged – at a young age – to assume all household responsibilities and to care for my seriously ill father (my only immediate family) from that time on until the day that he sadly passed away, leaving me without any other close family.
I have vivid memories of watching my father suffering in his bed in the hospital in the final days of his life, yet not knowing how best to help him. I was scared, anxious and felt a sense of hopelessness, unable to obtain any assistance from the nursing staff there. Because I could see that he had suffered a stroke and that he had a high temperature, I continually and repeatedly asked the overworked nurses for help to assess and treat my father’s condition – all to no avail. Then, on the next day, with my father’s condition unchanged, the Staff Nurse asked me to help them by giving my father a bed bath – apparently unconcerned that she was asking me to see my father naked. During all his time in that hospital, not one person sat with me, asked me if I was OK, or offered to talk to me about what had happened and was happening with my father. At the time, I needed that support so badly, especially as my father was the total extent of my family.
I think it was at that point that I vowed to do something with my life to help others, ideally in the field of medicine, in some way to make up for being obliged to just sit there – helpless – while my dear father just slipped away from me in that understaffed and overcrowded hospital. I think those nurses –who at the time seemed heartless and uncooperative – were simply swamped by the impossible workload and were forced to choose to deal with what seemed the most urgent and needy patients in their care, ignoring those who they judged to be either less serious cases, or (as perhaps was the case with my father) those who could not be helped in any meaningful way.
Later, after my father had passed away, I received the unexpected but wonderful opportunity that I now know was absolutely life-changing. Someone who believed in me made it possible for me to escape from my tough existence in a poor neighborhood and to relocate to the United States, where I could begin my studies to progress towards becoming a Registered Nurse.
Of course my struggles were by no means over. When I arrived in the US it was a major culture shock. I could neither write nor speak English, and was very lonely, particularly as I had just lost my father, but also because I was in a different country, many miles away from everyone I knew. In a different way, I suppose I once again felt discriminated against, being an “outsider” who could not speak the language and living somewhere where virtually everything was new and strange to me.
However, I have managed through hard work and studies to not only become able to communicate in English and to be comfortable in my new environment, but also to succeed in completing a tough nursing program, from which I recently graduated. I can measure my success in not just the fact of graduating and becoming a Licensed Registered Nurse, but additionally being the first and only person in my extended family to graduate with a college degree. I have also gained other certifications including Patient Care Technician, Phlebotomist, and EKG Technician.
Regarding my objectives for the future, my initial goal is to obtain employment as a nurse in the perioperative or Operating Room (OR) department of a major hospital in New York after obtaining my perioperative certificate, so that I can contribute to the provision of better conditions for patients before, during, and after operations.
I anticipate that I will learn a great deal by working in such an environment, and welcome the prospect of being at last able to put into practice so much of the theory and other aspects of all that I have learned in my nursing studies to date.
Further into the future I might want to take up a teaching role; at the moment that is just one possible career path that I could be interested in pursuing. What I am certain about is that I want to continue to develop a career in nursing, not only by continuing to learn and to advance in the workplace, but by continuing to study, too.
It is my firm conviction that study and learning have to be lifelong commitments, if real success is the objective. New techniques and technologies come along all the time, so it is important to keep up with those developments. The alternative is simply and inevitably to fall behind. Our patients depend upon nurses and doctors being competent so that they are more likely to have the best outcomes. Furthermore, we as nurses have a moral and ethical responsibility to do whatever we can for every single patient. Some patients can be irascible, rude, or “difficult” in other ways, but we have to ignore personalities and treat them all equally, however difficult that can be on occasion. We have to remember that everyone is different, and that includes how individuals deal in their own way with the fear of what might happen to them in hospital. Some of those “angry” patients might simply be finding a release for their fears in their aggressive dealings with their caring nurses.
If I were asked to guess at where I will be (career-wise) in (say) 10 years time, the best response I can offer is that I fully intend to be even more deeply involved in some aspect of nursing, whether it be as a senior nurse or nursing manager, or in an established teaching position. Either way, I hope to be in a position to pass on my knowledge and nursing skills for the benefit of others.
I think the motivation that drives me – even now – all stems from those early experiences in Brazil, especially the time when I watched my father dying, yet being powerless to help him. Since then I have felt it vitally important to use my knowledge to help those whose needs are greater than my own. That objective also drives me to do voluntary work, to make my contribution to good causes. In my view all of us who share this planet have a duty to do what we can for those less fortunate. Those of us who have jobs in public services like medicine can obviously fulfill that obligation by doing our work to the absolute best of our abilities, but we can do even more by actively participating in voluntary work wherever extra pairs of hands are needed – which is just about everywhere!
As regards my own personal journey, I believe it is vitally important to always remember who I am and where I came from. Those memories will always remind me that there are many, many people who are far worse off than me and who sorely need the help and skills that people like me can provide.