Chad - Taking it as it Comes
Chad -
I chose to be a nurse after I heard a nursing recruiter say the profession needs guys and minorities. Being Filipino and a guy, my ears perked up. I was recently graduated from culinary arts school, but looking for something more fulfilling. As I explored the possibilities further I found that nursing would be a natural fit for me because I like to work with people and make a difference. Nursing allows me use both sides of my brain at the same time, the creative and intellectual.
I’m fresh out of college, and currently working as a community health nurse for a retirement community. It has proven to be quite an undertaking for a new nurse as I am coordinating health care for residents, performing wellness checks, reassessing people who return from the hospital, and dealing with family issues, in addition to being a manager. As a new nurse I’m unsure of my skills, and being the head RN was initially daunting. I have had great support from the previous coordinator, but much of my education has been trial by fire. My multi-faceted role as counselor, psychologist, social worker and nurse makes it difficult to plan my work day. I have to take it as it comes. I’m a hands-on learner, so this induction to the nursing profession has been good.
I’m very excited about my new job. I love community health. I feel that it is the direction nursing needs to go if we are to change the health care system. While there will always be a need for acute care, we need to focus on prevention. I once heard an analogy that acute care is like coming to a river with people floating down it, and pulling the people out. Community health is going up river to see why the people are falling in. Working up river has a larger impact on the population as a whole. Community health allows me to work with people over the long term, develop therapeutic relationships, and focus on wellness.
As a new graduate I’m excited, but I’m also nervous because people now see me as a nurse. They anticipate a vast wealth of knowledge from me, yet I have had limited experience and can only offer so much. The nursing field is so broad it is impossible to know it all, but I am expected to.“Acute care is like coming to a river with people floating down it, and pulling the people out. Community health is going up river to see why the people are falling in.” In school you are taught much theory, but because of the amount of information you need to know it is only the tip of the iceberg. I don’t know how many times I heard from other nurses, “you’ll learn what you need to know on the floor.” As a new nurse, who has much expected of them, this is not the most reassuring statement, though it worked well to calm the nerves in school. The anxiety of being a new nurse aside, I take pride in the identity formed around being a nurse; being caring and nurturing, and earning patient trust. The responsibility as a nurse is humbling because people look to you and make life decisions based on your assessments.
Before I started my community health job, I went on a medical mission to the Philippines. This trip increased my excitement for the possibilities of nursing, but also showed me there is so much to do. I assisted with healthcare delivery in remote areas. We set up a total of six camps, helping an average of 1,200 people at each camp. We dealt with everything from coughs and colds to hypertension and cancer. Many of the patients had never seen a doctor or a nurse in their life and came simply to get their blood pressure taken. It was an amazing display of how much could be done with so little. It was my first time out of the country and I was taken aback by how different it was. The landscape was obviously different, and the poverty was amazing. People were surviving on so little. Being half Filipino I felt a huge responsibility to my heritage, and as a nurse I felt a huge responsibility for the health of others. I felt called to serve there.
Eventually, my goals are to have a small business in nursing, possibly adult family homes or an assisted living facility or nursing home. I feel I can do a lot for many people. I want to make an impact in my field. I saw a graph once that showed some tiny portion of health care dollars spent on primary care, a little bit more on secondary care, and about 95 percent on tertiary care. I’d like to change my focus in nursing to preventative care; to primary and secondary care – not tertiary care.
The geriatric population is growing dramatically and they will need more care and will want to know how to stay healthy. I want to work in communities to create strong education programs and keep people out of hospitals. Once I’ve accomplished that, then I’ll take on the task of changing the rest of the world.
Power Strategies: Nurture, Impact, Connection
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