The strengths that I will bring to my career as a nurse are the ones that have helped me in my life so far, and have evolved with my life experiences. Foremost are values and traits that I learned from my family and community growing up in Czechoslovakia — values like loyalty, commitment, reliability and resilience. In Zatec, where I grew up, people depended upon each other and trusted each other, and those are traits that I will bring to this job as well as those I’ve had in the past. I’ve been self-employed for nearly a decade and many of my client relationships go back to the very beginning. My clients often joke how sorry they will be when I begin my new career. I would hope that this speaks to the fact that my employers trust me and count on me, and value the diligence with which I approach every job each day.
I know that the demands of nursing can change from day-to-day and week-to-week, and a capacity to adapt to change — perseverance and flexibility — is a trait that I also hope will serve me well. It also comes, I think, from my experiences in my former country. There, almost overnight, our entire society was turned upside down. I had to learn and change or be left behind. And it may also come from my experiences adapting to a new country, one with a language and culture I was totally unfamiliar with, where I had no knowledge or support system, no network of family or friends or colleagues. To survive and succeed, I had to be resilient, and meet frustration with patience and an eagerness to learn. As I enter my new career, I believe these abilities will be more necessary than ever, and that I am well equipped to meet the difficulties and challenges that will be an inevitable part of becoming a superior nurse
