Career Development

In the NURSES movie, the nurses expressed a love and appreciation for their jobs that many people outside of the nursing profession do not have. Nurses see their job as a privilege and do everything they can to make life better for their patients. these nurses not only treated the patient and their disease, but they treated the siblings, parents, and extended families of their patients. Skills can be learned, but compassion and empathy are something that you must develop from within you. As a nurse, if you do not emotionally care for you patients, you are not truly caring for your patient. In our coursework we talk about emotional intelligence and how we can show empathy for our patients, but I think for some people that will take practice. I have always been a compassionate and empathetic person, but I need to practice putting that empathy into words. I don’t always know what to say in certain situations, even though I know I am feeling empathetic.

A location that they describe in the movie that I haven’t yet worked with is pediatric patients in a hospital setting. I have worked as a CNA in the pediatric setting, but a summer camp and a hospital unit are completely different worlds. Barriers in this setting would be understanding of what is happening, fear of doctors and nurses, and treating a sick/dying child when you have children around their age at home. Helping anyone die sounds like the hardest thing in the world but helping a child die seems even harder. They are at the beginning of their lives and as nurses we are the ones who care for them and their families as they say goodbye. You must recognize they are scared and talk to them to help calm them. We have extensive training in adult medical surgical care, but the time we have pediatrics is so short. This is an extremely diverse population where some kids have been to the hospital since they were young, and some kids are making their first trip to the hospital on the day you care for them. You are going to give each of them equal care, but one child may need more support than the other and we need to be prepared to give them that support.

To set myself apart from other applicants in the interview process, I will be prepared to put my strength at the forefront of my interview. I will have questions prepared before the interview that will help me identify if this is the hospital for me, but also these questions will tell my interviewer that I am interested in what they are about. I will also have my career goals clearly presented in multiple parts of my interview to show that I want to continue to learn and improve as a nurse. I will show my strengths through my experiences on my resumes, my communication skills, and my goals/intentions in my cover letter. I am full of empathy and have put others before myself when they need help my entire life and I want my future employer to know that. I will also highlight my strength through what I learned at UNE in clinical and at my preceptorship. I am an enthusiastic learner and willing to try anything I set my mind to. That will help me in addressing my weaknesses. I never give up if I fail the first time which makes me resilient and driven. Even if I am not the best, I will continue to work on my skills until I am!