My career started as a Personal support worker when I was 19. I worked as a home care PSW with Saint Elizabeth for 11 years. Going from home to home and working with various personalities in various circumstances gave me experience outside of my scope of practice. Many times, I was delegated to do ostomy bags, IV lines, and partial wound care. After 11 years in that environment, I felt there wasn’t much more I could learn as a PSW and that it was time to move forward in my career. I had been considering nursing because of my interaction with my son at Sick Kids Hospital. I was intrigued and decided that’s where I wanted to work. Life had different plans for me, however, and my plans got delayed multiple times. I refused to let life change my plans and finally managed to get into and complete my Registered Practical Nursing diploma. This, however, was never my final goal. My goal was always to become a Registered Nurse so that I could work at Sick Kids Hospital. As time has evolved, though, I have found myself still interested in Sick Kids but leaning toward mental health and addiction. My transition into nursing has been a very long and difficult road and, at times, had me wondering how badly I want this. Yet, here I am, making sure I get this completed. Where I end up inevitably in my career path is not set in stone. Instead, I’m choosing to let my circumstances lead me to where I belong. As a nurse, I can only be the best at my job if I land in the environment where I belong.
Even though a passion for a career is important, so is overall satisfaction, which does not only rely on finding our place in this world. To ensure satisfaction and provide upstanding care, a nurse must be sure to take note of their self-care techniques. Burnout is a serious issue affecting many professionals in the medical field. Nurses must be sure to take time to recover from long shifts and the stresses, including frustrations with unfinished work, delayed work, work overload, less qualified replacements when staff is short, limited support and the inevitable feelings of insufficiency resulting from the frustrations associated with daily work stresses (Karlsson et al., 2019). Research in these areas has shown that when self-care is applied during times of environmental stressors, it improves rates of burnout and increases job satisfaction while decreasing turnover rates (Karlsson et al., 2019). Job satisfaction is necessary to provide safe care to patients. When frustration is present, this allows for an increase in harmful mistakes to take place. Work overload creates an environment that holds a high potential for miscalculations, administration errors of medications, anxieties due to delays and insufficient care delivery. This leads to a very frustrated nurse whose main objective is to provide patient-centred care in a high-quality fashion, feeling helpless to provide the quality care they would prefer to deliver (Karlsson et al., 2019). Therefore, reaching my full potential requires a well-rounded awareness of not only my patients but also monitoring myself. I must be aware of my personal needs when it comes to my emotional, physical, spiritual and mental well-being.
Annually, in our careers, we will be tasked with writing reflections as a requirement, a requirement that many may do only to preserve their registration and nothing further. However, we must remember the importance of reflection is not just to complete a daunting task, because a reflection without action is useless (Shuldham, 2016). The purpose of reflection is not only for revalidation but to enhance our practice and grow within our professions. The idea of our reflections is to enhance our overall efficacy, study our values, improve our work habits, and improve the safety of patients, to name a few. The reflection is much more than just completing another task. It involves “looking ahead rather than looking back…imagine all the improvements that could be accomplished should each nurse implement their reflections into practice” (Shuldham, 2016).
