What is it like to be a nurse?

As a fairly recent graduate of nursing school, I suppose I haven’t had as much experience as those with a few years in the field. However, I have still worked over a thousand hours on the job so I do have something to say about my profession.

No other job will show you what kind of person you are to the degree that nursing does. You will encounter situations and patients that will challenge you and show what your instinctive response to them is. Sometimes what you find out about yourself is not always positive, but it always shows you what you can improve in or learn from. In this way, no other job will show you how to make yourself a better person than nursing will.

Nursing is not fluffy. Before school, I had this vague idea that I wished to do nursing because I “wanted to help people.” Well, helping people, it turns out, can be gritty, incredibly difficult, and stressful. Sometimes, you’ll get a patient that you can’t stand being in the same room with because they are rude/inappropriate/aggressive, but they’re still your patient and that means you’ve got to go in and take care of them. You’ll also develop an iron stomach as you come to deal with every type of smelly body fluid possible (including many varieties of stool).

In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, nursing is the easiest way in which to do good. By that, he doesn’t mean the job itself is easy: But we, as nurses, have the most opportunities to do good in our day-to-day work. This is true, as we have many times where we can make someone’s day just a little bit better, either through getting them a warm blanket, giving them a good hot shower, or taking them to the bathroom.

You will never grow stagnant. There will always be some new procedure that you will have to learn or skill you have to brush up on, of course, that your manager wants you to do. Even my nursing preceptor, with almost 30 years of experience, sat and listened intently to a presentation our nursing educator was giving on how to handle sepsis and the new procedure we were supposed to follow should we ever have to deal with it. Also, you have so many opportunities to expand in your profession, be it through specializing in a field like pediatrics, neurology, dialysis, or cardiology, or even through getting your masters.

I’ll admit, nursing does still intimidate me, even after four years. However, it has, without a doubt, challenged me to be a better person. To this day, I don’t regret getting into this profession.

----Emily Gillespie from Canada

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