My Clinical Experience Essay

The moment! That is what all nurses will tell you they experience in the beginning of their career that told them in their heart this was their calling. As a nursing student, I can still remember the first time giving a bed bath to a dementia patient in a nursing home. The patient was freighted, scared and yelling out for her mother. Here, I thought is this lady who has no idea what is going and feeling scared, hopeless and confused. As I grabbed her hand and looked at her and said everything is going to be ok, I am here with you. That was my moment, when I knew this profession was my calling.

Upon graduating and getting my first nursing job in a rehab facility, I was overjoyed, Here I am, all the late nights of studying, has brought me here. Over the year spent in the rehab, I overcame my shyness and learned how to communicate with patients. I learned compassion, and how to feel for my patients who were sick or dying. I felt honored to hold the hands of dying and comfort the family. Understanding how to assess the body and do it in a way that adapts to that person's needs specifically. The first year of nursing, was a year of challenges and learning to overcome my fears for the better of my patients.

I wanted more, more things to learn, more patients to access, and most of all more knowledge. The hospital setting is quick, patients are very sick, and you as their nurse need to be able to walk into work and expect anything. Unlike the rehab, my first day I left crying upset, thinking can I do this? The following morning, I woke up with hope and a thought, that I can do anything I put my mind too. As months passed on, I began to grow into a fast paced, efficient nurse whose knowledge was looked for support toward other nurses on the floor. Through preceptor and charge nursing, I found happiness in the teaching of others, by I wanted more knowledge. So, I decided to purse my bachelors and start traveling