This reflective essay explores the motivations, challenges, and rewards associated with pursuing a nursing career. The author examines the physical and emotional demands nurses face daily, including exposure to communicable diseases, long working hours, and increasing malpractice liability. Drawing on personal experience and references to nursing theorist Virginia Henderson, the essay argues that nursing is an admirable profession grounded in empathy, healing, and compassion. Despite being undervalued relative to physicians and subject to workplace dangers, nursing fulfills a vital social role by empowering patients and easing both physical and emotional suffering.
Bodily fluids and oozing blood: most young children know instinctively that what comes out of our bodies is often "gross." Yet as nurses, we are obliged to deal with all of life's discharges and messiness. Nurses are responsible for more than just moral support for patients — it is we who come into direct contact with communicable diseases and other dangers ranging from needle pricks to contaminated blood. More and more, nurses deal with hazards beyond those related to illness alone.
Job-related stress and strain affects all persons in the medical profession. Nurses are called on to work extraordinarily long hours, for example, and are given increasingly difficult responsibilities related to medical technologies. Moreover, nurses are being involved in malpractice lawsuits more frequently than ever before. In his article "On the Defensive," Todd Stein notes, "Today, as nurses take on more of the physician's medical duties, they are increasingly exposed to a physician's greatest fear — the malpractice lawsuit."
Because of all these factors, my dream of becoming a nurse has been relatively difficult to fulfill. Friends and family have often vocally opposed my desire to enter the nursing profession because of the various mental and physical dangers involved. Although nurses generally get paid well, we are undervalued as professionals, especially when compared to doctors. My decision to become a nurse was therefore deliberate and carefully considered. I have taken considerable time off and invested time, effort, and money into schooling in order to realize my dream. Nursing, in spite of its dangers and drawbacks, is an admirable profession because it involves healing, kindness, and compassion.
Like many nurses, I am drawn to the profession out of a deep desire to help others heal and prosper. Nurses can directly impact the lives of their patients by properly attending to their needs, both physical and mental. Unfortunately, many aspiring nurses meet with discouraging comments from friends and family members — comments that could potentially deter someone from pursuing the career in earnest. When I graduated from high school, for example, many people advised me against a career in nursing. In spite of these obstacles, I invested a significant amount of energy, time, and resources into returning to school to manifest my dreams.
In order to be a successful and effective nurse, one must be empathetic and patient, as well as physically and mentally strong. Being a nurse is more than administering medication or earning a paycheck; nursing is about giving and caring. According to Virginia Henderson, nursing does not consist of merely following a physician's orders; it entails "assisting individuals to gain independence in relation to the performance of activities contributing to health or its recovery." In other words, nurses help the infirm to heal themselves — nurses empower patients. In order to do so, nurses must themselves be strong and capable.
Understanding the true definition of a nurse and of the nursing profession is essential for anyone wishing to undertake the career. Nursing means working one on one with individuals who may be overwhelmed by all manner of physical or mental pain and suffering, or who may even be on the brink of death. Because nurses work so closely with the most delicate matters of human existence — pain, suffering, and death — ours is a profoundly difficult job.
"Daily tasks and specialization in nursing"
"Occupational hazards, malpractice, and undervaluation"
Because nursing has been my lifelong dream, I fearlessly endeavor to undertake this admirable profession in order to fulfill not only my own dreams, but my patients' dreams as well.
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