My individual strengths
As I graduated from my Associate degree program and pass my NCLEX exam I was very happy and felt very strong about it, knowing that one step in my future carrier is done. The next step was to find a job. I was very lucky that in a few months after I passed my nursing license exam I found a job. When I went for the interview for my suspected job, I was told that I should forget about what I learned in my nursing school, that I will have to learn my profession from scratch, meaning to be an operating room nurse. So my carrier started, it was a big challenge for me, every day I learned something new, something very interesting that I never encounter before and every day at my work I felt that I am getting stronger and stronger, not to so say that I did not have ups and down on my learning carrier. It was not easy to achieve all my goals, but I had good support from my coworkers and from my manager, they were assuring me that slowly I will understand all the patterns of my new job and slowly my frustration disappear. I have a very interesting job and every day is a challenge, because I do different types of surgeries and I dill with multicultural patients. I am a good listener, I make the patient feel comfortable during the interview, I am easy to talk to, I speak multiple languages, I interpret for other nurses and surgeons in the holding area and I make sure that the patients understand what procedure they are waiting for. I think that I am a very strong person by now, and the knowledge I received during the beginning of my carrier as an OR nurse make me even stronger and it makes me feel good about it. It makes me feel good, because I did not quit, like some other novice at my job and that I overcome all my annoyances.
Self analysis
During My BSN program I learned something new that every nurse should know while working as an RN in different areas of health related professions. I learned physical assessment, which was one of the most important classes for an RN, without this class I don’t think any nurses assessment is possible, but I can’t say that this class gave me too much practical knowledge, because we, meaning me and my classmates learned the physical assessment by watching the tapes and not actually doing it on the patients and the instructor I had was not very good in showing us the stuff we needed. I also learned different types of nursing research and the importance of knowing all this is tremendous, because it helped me in my next classes to understand and be able to appreciate the significance of that process. During the class of management of patient care I had a great experience, I had clinical at Maimonides medical center and every time I went there I learned something new: like how the hemo dialysis process is going, how the nurse manager of a floor makes the working schedules for the nurses and how are the floor meetings performed, how the rounds are performed and the questions addressed during the rounds, I attended a hospital meeting about the nurses protest of assignment, I visit the hospital day surgery center and observed how the OR manager is performing her organizational duties and the different approaches she uses to accomplish the assignments of the day. On our preconference and post conference the instructor discussed with us different topics related to organizational process of the management in the hospital and we had meetings with HR people, with the NYSNA representative of the hospital, with the vice president of the hospital and with the chaplan of the hospital. All these meeting were very informative and useful and our instructor did a great job in achieving it. In my community health class and clinical I had the opportunity to attend the Stein Senior Center and to learn about the needs of older adults and about their benefits of attending the center. During the semester our group presented the center with four individual projects. Each of the projects was important in their own way. I and my group prepared the medication safety project. We researched the topic and organized a three way boards with tips and questions about medication safety for older adults. Also we demonstrated the residents of the center medication boxes to prevent the medications errors that sometimes occur in older people. The presentation was well accepted by the residents of the center. Every day at the center we helped serving lunches and measure the blood pressure of the residents. Moreover we participated in the decoration of the center for the upcoming holidays and contributed to the arrangement of the gift baskets for the holiday’s ruffle. The center benefited a lot from having the nurses there and I learned something new about the older adults and about the importance of helping these people with the activities of the center and enjoyed seeing their appreciation and well being. So far I am happy with my BSN program and looking forward in graduating by next year.
