It was early on a Saturday morning — in fact so early that most normal college kids would still consider it Friday night. I was awakened from my three a.m. nap by the alarms that I set to force myself to keep studying until I couldn’t possibly forget anything. Then, I started to question whether or not I made the right decision by going into nursing school — could it really be worth such a ridiculous amount of stress? It was in this moment of complete exhaustion that I found my answer.
No matter how much we try to avoid it, we all end up in situations where we encounter nurses. And I started to reflect on those times.
When I was 11 years old, I was tested for autoimmune diseases because my hands would turn blue when I was cold. And to make matters worse, I found out I was going to have to get several blood draws. Now, I have never done well with needles. The times I had blood drawn before this, I ended up passing out or turning a lovely shade of lime green. But while one nurse drew blood from my arm, another nurse sat next to me and simply talked to me and made me laugh. They took three vials of blood and I never even flinched.
When I was 17 years old, I visited my grandmother at the nursing home. Her nurse told me how much she loved working with my grandma and how proud my grandma was of me. I was able to leave that day knowing that my grandma was in a place where she was cared for as a person and wasn't just treated as another patient.
When I was 18 years old, I took that ACT for the third time and got so sick that I couldn’t finish the test. I ended up in the ER without hope that I would get into one of the colleges that I considered to be a dream school. After my nurse finished up my paperwork, she sat with me and made sure that I was going to be okay. She told me I would be an amazing nurse no matter what.
At 20 years old, I’m determined to make sure that she was right.
As a nursing student who is still learning the most basic of skills, it’s easy to forget that in just a couple short years, we will be lifesavers. We will be those nurses that made us smile on days when we were feeling terrible and lying in a hospital bed. We will be the nurses who took care of our loved ones and maybe even saved their lives. All the work we do now will be worth it when we are able to make someone’s day even just a little better. When I got out of bed for clinical at 5 o’clock this morning, I put on my uniform and smiled. Because I know that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing.
