How I Can Contribute to the Nursing Profession

Application to Nursing School

One of the main reasons I decided to pursue a career in nursing is my longstanding goal to help others. Over the years, I considered other helping career choices that could further this goal, but I always returned to the nursing profession as being the best personal choice for my future life plans. A major factor in making this choice was the fact that several members of my immediate family and family friends were nurses who consistently encouraged me to become a nurse and reassured me that I possessed “the right stuff” to become a caring professional. During my college and subsequent nursing school pursuits, the smoldering interest that I had in becoming a nurse caught fire and I became convinced that a career in nursing was the correct choice for me. Not only did I possess “the right stuff” according to others, I also came to realize that many of my personal attributes such as a strong sense of empathy, self-efficacy and interpersonal communication skills, were especially appropriate for excelling in the professional nursing field.

This early commitment to a career in the nursing profession has been reinforced time and again after providing the patient care that not only helped individuals get better, but reassured their family members and friends that they were receiving the best possible care available at the same time. Moreover, this commitment to helping others has intensified greatly in recent years as the ongoing global Covid-19 pandemic continues to stretch health care resources to their limits and beyond. Indeed, many people at present are rightfully concerned that they and their loved ones will get seriously ill, and it is reasonable to suggest that far too many Americans may not survive the current omicron variant wave that is projected to wash over the country during the next several months.

Against this backdrop, the provision of effective patient care has assumed new importance and relevance for all medical disciplines in general, but the nursing profession in particular since we are on the front lines of delivering high-quality patient care. Indeed, I receive an intense sense of personal satisfaction from seeing ill people recover with my help and their family members and friends reassured in the process, and this has motivated me to learn how to become as proficient as possible as a nursing professional. All of this is not to say, of course, that I view myself as a “Florence Nightingale super-nurse” – far from it -- but it is to say that that is what I want to become by continuing my nursing education so I can help others regain their health and resume their normal lives.

This personal experiential and educational background suggest that I can contribute to the nursing profession in multiple ways. Indeed, I look forward to participating in interdisciplinary teams as well as codifying and sharing my newfound knowledge with others through informal and formal peer-reviewed publications. Likewise, I am eager to collaborate with my peers in meaningful ways in order to improve my interpersonal and cross-cultural communication skills as well as my abilities to develop a fuller understanding concerning how to project the sense of professional confidence that is needed to reassure scared and anxious patients. In addition, I am confident that I can contribute to the nursing profession by keeping abreast of current best evidence-based practices and advances in health care-related technologies that will have an impact on the nursing profession in the future. Finally, I believe that my passion for helping others will translate into a lifelong career of service where I can make a real difference in the quality of other people’s lives which will in turn substantively improve the quality of my own life.