Many candidates enter nursing each with different expectations. To me the best motivation to enter the profession is service to our fellow human beings and to show them the love of our Creator. Look around and everywhere we find many suffering souls. Nurses are often in a position to lend a helping and encouraging hand.
To most of us Nursing brings back the picture of Florence Nightingale, 'The Lady With The Lamp' and many a young individual enters the field with sincere hopes of serving, only to be discouraged by fellow nurses who didn't quite make it in their career. To such I wish to lend a word of encouragement: " keep on at it and you can make a difference".
My own career in nursing has been challenged by selfless individuals who have been different and not gone with the flow of mediocre service but gave it all they had.
I think of my own entry into nursing eagerly desiring to be of service to others. Like many, I felt disappointed to find that most of the time it is hard to find time to talk to the patients and apply all that you learn theoretically. Often this is due to shortage in staffing, inadequate supplies and controlling attitudes of older nurses who do not want to change for the better. But I found that with time comes experience and one learns to balance theory with practice and still
provide Excellent Nursing Care.
"What does it have for me?" is the question most people would ask themselves.
Personally, I am happy I chose the Profession as it helped me think analytically, have a heart for people, meet many people, and have a broader view on life.
I think also, of how it has helped my family on different occasions (one of them - helping my alcoholic daddy getting de-addicted-).
I wish to recount here an incident, which I will never forget. It was in 1991. I had left my nursing profession as a nursing supervisor in 1989, when I married and my husband was about to take on an overseas job. My precious and beloved mother had just had her surgery for a hernia repair. Having waited for long while she was in the Operation Theatre, I was relieved to see her back in the ward apparently well and responding normally. She was asking to be positioned and I was alone with my younger brother trying to help her. There was no one else [Nurse or attendant] who came to see her after the surgery! While I am not throwing any stones (a biblical expression), as I must realize that the system (hospitalization) often misfires due to high volume of patients.
I am glad and extremely thankful to God that I was there at that time.
Within minutes she stopped speaking and was making the typical gesture of air hunger, 'pointing to her throat" and her eyes were rolling upwards. In that most desperate moment, like God's miracle all that I learned in my Nursing College suddenly came fresh to my mind then (I know that it was only God who gave me the presence of mind to do what I did). I initiated Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation on her and yelled to my brother to call for the doctor. Immediately a resident doctor came in and took over the chest compressions. I noticed that she was doing very superficial compressions. Not enough to compress the sternum and improve blood return. I took over without being rude to her. By the same grace of God, the senior Assistant Surgeon who had assisted in the surgery was just making rounds at that time, heard the commotion, entered in, and took control of the situation while I was attending to my mother, and within minutes she was transferred to ICU. I remember being unwilling to give up the cardiac compression and trust my mother to anyone else after having seen the way the resident doctor had been unable to give cardiac compressions. But once again I just want to thank God who in His mercy didn't allow anything to go wrong further and she recovered quickly from then on after a brief period (two days) in the ICU. The doctors thought that she had gone into respiratory failure due to having been extubated too early. The recurring thought that keeps warning me is "what would have happened if I were the nurse who neglected to be at the bedsides for post-operative care of a patient in such a critical condition with the relatives with no knowledge of nursing. From this incident I feel like telling every medical personnel "put your heart and mind into what you are learning and while you are working. You never know when you might require it yourself
