Stephanie Winters

Explore UT FS 301

October 15, 2006

My True Passion

If you ask nurses why they chose their profession, most will tell you it’s because of a personal experience. Two summers ago I had an experience that forever changed my career path to nursing; it led me to volunteer and discover my future profession.

In 2005, I was admitted for a routine surgery to remove a cyst on my ovary. During surgery, the doctor nicked an artery and didn’t fix it before stitching me up. I had to have a second surgery and a blood transfusion before I could fully recover. I was in the hospital for a week, unable to move and do everyday activities such as walking and eating due to my anemia. One of the nurses was very attentive and really made me feel safe in the hospital environment. Her intense passion for her profession and caring for others had a large impact on me. From my experience in the hospital and watching the nurse perform her job, I made the decision that I wanted to help and care for people who were in situations such as the one that I was in. It is important that the patients feel as if they can share their feelings and depend upon someone in their time of need. I want to be that someone for a patient.

After my experience in the hospital, I started volunteering at a nursing home in North Austin called The Summit at Northwest Hills Assisted Living. Working with the elderly at a retirement home was not only an excellent opportunity to do something for the community but also an exceptional learning experience in the health care field. At the Summit, I wanted to work with the elderly residents to increase the quality of their lives and help them pass their time doing something fun and enjoyable. I established a program for the residents that combined games and companionship. On the first day that I began my program, twelve men and women came to talk and play Black Jack. To start the session, we all introduced ourselves, I dealt the cards and the game began. My interactions between the residents started slowly but with every moment became easier. The residents mostly knew each other before I brought them together, and I was able to recognize and capitalize on some of these interpersonal relationships as the sessions progressed. Eventually my Black Jack group became so popular that we had to have multiple game tables instead of one. After a few months of volunteering, I decided to start another program where I painted some of the women’s nails because they couldn’t do it themselves. It became a hit with the elderly women and was something that I really enjoyed being a part of.

Volunteering at the home was the most compelling and formative experience that I have ever had to date. The fact that I affected someone else’s life in a positive way and made them feel better was a wonderful and rewarding experience. Volunteering became a passion for me; it filled my idle time; it was a source of self-respect; it generated self-actualization; it became something that I worked on not for community service hours but, instead, for myself. Working with the elderly made me realize that I had talent and potential in the healthcare field. Volunteering at the home came naturally to me; there was never a time when I hesitated or when I was unsure how to a handle situation. I loved being with and helping the residents; it was the highlight of my week.

The men and women that I met at the Summit at Northwest Hills Assisted Living genuinely affected my everyday life. They taught me patience, responsibility, and the importance of companionship. My effort at the retirement home was really important to the residents and to me because it truly raised the quality of life for them to be able to have someone to talk to who would listen to their beloved stories. For me, a pleasurable event was when the residents told me elaborate stories about their pasts. They loved to tell me about their lives during World War II. These stories included details of everyday life during those years. They liked to explain the affect of the war on their childhoods. The residents also talked about the economy of those days and the restrictions that they lived with. They were always very sad as they related stories about the loss of family members and friends. My favorite stories were from the women when they talked about how they met their husbands. These stories were always very romantic. The residents always wanted me to share my day-to-day life stories with them. They loved to hear about the activities that I was involved in, and they loved to give advice; they gave out more advice than I could absorb. The residents even argued with each other in an attempt to gain my acceptance of these multiple morsels of opinion. The pleasure that the residents received from having me there to talk to them and the heartfelt thanks that they gave me in return were more than enough to make me realize that nursing was truly the job for me.

After the great experience that I had at the Summit, I decided to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital of Austin for a change of pace. I started volunteering at the beginning of last summer and decided that I never wanted to stop. I began volunteering one shift a week and quickly decided to add on a second shift. I ended up volunteering a total of over eighty hours at the hospital this past summer, which is double the amount that most college students volunteer in one semester. At the Children’s Hospital I was able to work one-on-one with kids recovering from surgery. I passed out food trays, helped clean rooms, brought blood samples to the lab, heated blankets and towels, and performed other errands. Even though I had to carry out mundane tasks, it was a great opportunity for me to become more informed about the career path that I wanted to follow. My favorite task at the hospital was helping the Clinical Assistant take vitals because I was able to get a head start on learning how to perform some everyday jobs that I would have to know for my nursing classes in college. Volunteering at the Children’s Hospital of Austin turned out to be a very good learning experience for me.

I have learned so much from my volunteer work and it has taught me practical information that I can apply to real life. I feel as if I truly studied the nursing career and that I am not just jumping into a major. This past week, I was able to use the skills that I learned when volunteering to identify a woman in need of help. A woman had dropped down in pain after the Longhorn football game and no one stopped to help her because they assumed she was a drunk. Using the knowledge I have gained from working with the elderly and at the hospital, I was able to recognize that she was having a heart attack. I called the Emergency Medical Services and helped save the woman’s life. This was a very heartwarming and satisfying experience for me. Using what I learned in the hospital, I was able to identify the signs of a heart and apply it to real life.

When people ask me in what I am majoring, I get mixed reactions after I say “nursing.” Some people tell me that I am not fulfilling my intellectual potential by becoming a nurse and that I should instead go to medical school to be a full-fledged doctor. Others support me and tell me about how wonderful it is that I am dedicating my career to care for people. My ultimate goal is to “get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige” which I will achieve by becoming a nurse.⁶ As Giametti states in his 1985 Yale Freshman Address, “you will receive vast quantities of advice – about what to study, what to major in, what to pursue in order to gain a spot in some postgraduate school; you will be told by nervous elders to study accounting because it is the real world, and so forth. Simply remember through it all that a balance sheet is no more real than a molecule or a poem or a ballot… summoning the resources of heart and spirit can create that shared life of aspiration and achievement that we call civilization.”⁷ When people are upset about my choice of career, I just remember that not everyone is an accountant, doctor, lawyer or engineer. There are so many different career paths and ways to live. The most important thing is to choose something that makes you happy, which for me, is nursing. Nursing and caring for others is a part of me; it is something that I can’t stop doing because I truly enjoy it. I am extremely passionate about becoming a nurse; I would not trade it for any other job.

My experience as a patient in the hospital opened my eyes and allowed me to discover my true passion. It got me started on a path to pursue my dream of being a health care provider. My volunteer work has really shown me the ups and downs of being a nurse (as shown in this video about registered nurses) and has gotten me excited about my future in the health care field.⁸ In order to become a nurse, I have to work really hard in school. For the past two years I have focused on what I could do, and the correct route I should take, to become a nurse. I paid close attention in school, participated in many community service projects and applied to the School of Nursing at the University of Texas. When I received my acceptance letter into the nursing school I was relieved and excited to know that I was on the correct path to become a nurse; that becoming a nurse was a reality for me. My dream and passion is to become a pediatric registered nurse. I want to work with children in a postoperative environment. While volunteering, I was able to be in that setting and I enjoyed it immensely. It gives me great pleasure to working and help children and I want to get as much experience in the nursing environment as I can. I plan on applying for a job as a postoperative Clinical Assistant at the Children’s Hospital of Austin this summer in hope to gain knowledge and help care for people in need. My passion and ultimate goal is to become a nurse.

Word Count: 1813

Notes

1. “Planning Your Discharge,” Private Patient Services & Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, 2006, http://www.parksidesuite.org.uk/planning/.html.

2. “Not Just Assisted Living, Better Living,” The Summit at Northwest Hills ElderLiving Source, 2006,http://www.elderlivingsource.com/facilities/TX/815461.php.

3. BananaStock, “People playing cards,” Jupiterimages, 2006, http://www.jupiter

images.com/popup2.aspx?navigationSubType=itemdetails&ItemID=22778924.

4. “Childrens Hospital,” College of Pharmacy at UT Austin.. Austin, Temple, and Waco Regional Internship Programs, 2006, ://www.utexas.edu/pharmacy/general/

experiential/regions/ATW/atwindex.html.

5. “Rescue 6 Wallpaper,” Dave’s Place, 2006, http://www.dave911.com/ems/

2004_06_27_archive.html.

6. Gidmetti, "A Free and Ordered Space," in Explore Texas, ed. Jerome Bump. (Austin: Jenn’s Copy & Binding, 2006), 321.

7. Pink, "Revenge of the Right Brain,” in Explore Texas, ed. Jerome Bump. (Austin: Jenn’s Copy and Binding, 2006), 324.

8. Career Voyages, “Registered Nurses,” 2006, http://www.careervoyages.gov/

healthcare-videos.cfm.