Personal Experience: My Own Definition of Nursing

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As first year nursing students, it’s important that we find out what truly defines our profession. In order to do this we need to evaluate the different perspectives that surround nursing, which means I need to reflect on the definitions from my interview, my own developing view, and the readings and discussions we had in class. In order to examine these various perspectives, I was given the opportunity to interview a current nurse. This interview allowed me to form my own view, and to evaluate what I’ve learned about nursing in a classroom and compare and contrast it to a clinical setting. I was fortunate to have a nurse in my family, who was willing to share her experiences as a nurse with me. The nurse that I had the privilege of interviewing was my aunt, Margaret M. Bartholomae. My aunt began her educational career at William Rainey Harper College, where she received her associate’s degree in nursing. Afterward, she passed the NCLEX, and was able to practice nursing. However, as she progressed in her career she realized the importance of a more extensive education. Later, my aunt decided to enter and complete a RN-BSN program at Northern Illinois University. Currently, she works at a clinic and specializes in pediatrics. I was able to arrange an interview with her, and she was kind enough to invite me to her home. Before I started the interview, I explained to my aunt that the purpose of the interview was to evaluate the material that I learned in class such as bioethics and healthcare therapeutic communication, and how it relates to current nursing practice in a clinical setting. One of the first questions I asked my aunt was if she had encountered any ethical dilemmas or issues that she faced in her practice. S... ... middle of paper ... ...upted my aunt while she was speaking, not because I was rude, I was just excited to hear about the experiences in the nursing profession. A few changes that I would make to the interview would be to calm myself down before the interview so I wouldn’t be as nervous, and I would not interrupt when my aunt was talking. All in all, after gathering information from my textbooks, classroom activities, and the nurse I interviewed I was able to construct my own definition of nursing. I define nursing as protecting, promoting, and optimizing a person’s health and abilities, alleviating their pain through diagnosis and evaluating the treatment of their response, and advocating for their care and their families. The interview definitely opened my eyes to view nursing in a different perspective, and how it can be an exhausting profession, but rewarding at the same time.

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