When I began to consider my career options following high school, I asked myself many questions. What is something I could do for the rest of my life? Did I want to make money or make a difference? Did I want to work with other people or alone? Did I want to do something where I dealt with products or people? As I asked myself these questions and considered my answers to them, I began to realize that I wanted to do something where I made a difference, where I worked with other people, and dealt with people. Then I considered what occupations might fit those parameters. It began to be obvious that the health care field is where I belonged.
To that end, I pursued a degree in nursing and became a nurse. I enjoy being nurse. My job enables me to make a difference in people’s lives, to help them restore or achieve a meaningful quality of life. But it’s not just the patients I get to help. I also get to help the patients’ families, too. But it’s not just about taking care of patients in the sense of putting in IVs or otherwise providing them with care. It’s also about educating the patients and their families, which offers me the opportunity to help make a difference in their lives even after they’ve left my care. I didn’t think about that part of things when I first started nursing school, but it became clear as I went through nursing school that nursing is more than just assisting doctors and giving injections.
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It’s about educating patients and helping them become participants in their own care and treatment – helping them to ‘possess’ or ‘own’ their health and to become active agents in taking care of themselves. Health care professionals must be willing to help patients become responsible for their own health, especially since the professionals can’t be with the patients 24/7.
I had the opportunity to work at a charitable clinic in Chicago, and I took the opportunity to expand my experiences as a nurse. Working in a charitable clinic opened my eyes in a very real way. I thought I could anticipate the experience; I knew that it would be very different from other environments in which I’d worked. But to meet people who didn’t routinely have access to proper health care was a real eye-opening experience. Because these people didn’t have regular access to health care, it became all the more important to educate these patients on how to take responsibility for their own health. Not only did I really come to appreciate the importance of patient education, I also began to appreciate the limitations of a nurse’s position. I can help patients but only so far – there is a point where the doctor takes over to truly guide the patient’s recovery or treatment plan.
Between realizing the limitations of being a nurse and the eye-opening experience in Chicago, I felt inspired to go farther. I want to do more for my patients. I want to be able to go farther to help them. I want to be able to give them more guidance, more power, over their health and their treatment. I cannot do that as a nurse. However, as a doctor, I could. I would have more skills, more freedom, and more experience which would serve me in serving my patients.
The longer I work as a nurse, the more I appreciate the opportunities afforded to me to help patients. But I also become more and more aware of the limitations of my position. I wish to expand my abilities to help patients. I wish to break free of the limitations which I now encounter. I want to do more to help people, to educate them, to make meaningful differences in their lives. I realize that the only way that I can accomplish these goals is to become a doctor. I recognize that it will be a lot of hard work and take a lot of time, but the end result will be worth it. In the end I will have the skills, abilities, and responsibilities that doctors have which will enable me to help my patients in more meaningful ways. I will be able to educate them better and provide them with more information in order to make better decisions regarding their own health. By being more empowered, I will be able to better empower my patients.
