Awake!

“Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” -Ephesians 3: 14 NLT

Friday, January 28, 2011

Why Nursing?

Why Nursing?
Draft version 1.0

As child when I grew up I wanted to run an orphanage, write books or own a summer camp. In high school, I knew I most wanted to work with children and stories but I didn’t know how to make either interest work as a stable career.


I needed a job:
-working with people
-with the possibility of travel
-and reasonable starting income/job security (mostly for my parents’ sake, I tend to be more idealistic than pragmatic)


Based on these criteria, I applied into nursing straight out of high school.
And discovered I loved it.
(good thing because the degree was not cheap!)


Not only did it fit the criteria but it was satisfying in a variety of other ways.

Additional things to love about nursing:
-Helping people with the “little things” (e.g. the art of positioning pillows, scrubbing itchy backs, setting up at meals)
-Endless new things to learn (overwhelming at times but awesome)
-Being a networker in the healthcare team (communicating back and forth with PT, OT, Physicians, Nutritionists, Lab Personnel, Pharmacists, and more)
-Opportunities to work with a variety of populations and in different specializations (e.g. elderly, newborns, medicine, surgery, palliative, community, etc.)
-More chocolate in a single Christmas time shift than can be accrued trick or treating


Not that everything about being a nurse is lovely (cough-night shifts-cough) but this post is why nursing not why not nursing. ☺