Personal Reflective Essay: My Experience As A Nurse

I remember being a teenager and watching the movie Patch Adams in one of my high school classrooms. There is one quote from the film that stuck with me throughout my many years of school: “You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, I guarantee, you’ll win, no matter what the outcome” (Farell, Kemp, Minoff, Newirth, & Shadyac, 1998). I progressed through nursing school knowing I was called into nursing, but I had yet to discover the specialty I felt called into. Over the past few months, I enjoyed the opportunity to serve children with hematologic and oncologic disorders while working as a Care Partner here at Cook Children's. Some would claim my job was collecting urine and assisting with hygiene. I consider my position to include listening to the fears of the children who are fighting terrible diseases. I recall a patient who came in for a final dose of chemotherapy, only to find out her cancer metastasized to other regions of her body. I entered the room for an hourly round and noticed her crying alone. As I began to encourage her to express her feelings, her tears dried up, and she was able to gain back her composure. To the patient, I was a stranger. To me, she was the calling I had been searching for. Throughout the years of nursing school, I learned plenty of

I participated in a Transcultural Nursing class, where I was able to work in hospitals, schools, and orphanages in Kenya. I remember walking into a bedroom of a teenage girl who owned a skirt, a shirt, flip flops and a bare metal bed. These were the only items she possessed. I thought about all the clothes I had back at home. I left nearly every belonging I had brought with me to her. This was not out of pity or anything like that, but it was out of compassion for the less fortunate. Frequently, I skipped my own meal and gave it to the homeless kids, because I knew I would come back here to America where I had access to