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Artefacts and Evidence

This is a photo of one of the pages of the textbook I studied in the public health elective I took in high school. This class was the first exposure I got to learning about the health care system and about the impacts of public health throughout history. We learned about worldwide vaccine and eradication efforts with diseases like smallpox and polio, and this is when I first began to think about pursuing a career in healthcare. When I first applied to nursing school out of high school, I wanted to work towards being a public health nurse so that I could get involved with vaccination efforts and public education to improve population health. In a way, this course was the very first step in my nursing journey as it sparked my interest in healthcare and provided me some knowledge about public health, which is an important aspect of nursing for promoting population health and disease prevention.

 

This is a photo of my degree in biomedical science from the University of Guelph. Although I was accepted to nursing school after high school, at this time I was unsure that nursing was the career for me. I decided to take a degree that was still health-focused, but kept my career options open. Throughout the course of my time at the University of Guelph, I took courses physiology, biochemistry, anatomy dissection labs and nutrition. From taking this program I was able to explore my passion for health and biology, and gain knowledge in fields that are directly applicable to nursing, including physiology, anatomy, pathology and more.

 

When I received my acceptance letter from Trent I was siting in the break room at work during a difficult shift. I was so excited to see that I got in, as it gave me a new sense of direction and fulfillment knowing that I was on the path towards becoming a nurse. I was so excited thinking about all the placements I would do and the career options I could pursue. Completing a nursing program is a requirement for nurses, providing the foundation of nursing knowledge, skills and clinical practice to prepare students to eventually become self-regulating professionals, and is therefore a crucial component of my nursing journey.

 

This is the very first nursing textbook I bought. The first reading I completed was about relational inquiry and taking a relational approach to nursing. Reading all the example scenarios and about how to communicate effectively with clients made me really look forward to getting to have my first nursing-student-client interaction, and use the skills I was learning about in class to create a therapeutic environment for clients. Nursing textbooks are important for my nursing journey as they form part of the body of evidence that can be used to make evidence-informed clinical decisions, and are an important resource for providing high-quality patient-centred care.

 

This uniform represents the beginning of my journey as a student nurse, as I will be wearing it to all of my clinicals and labs. This is how I will be gaining hands-on experience that I will draw upon in my nursing career when making evidence-informed decisions. As I complete the labs and placements, I hope to learn nursing skills as well as effective communication skills with clients and other healthcare professionals. I also hope to learn more about how the healthcare system works in different settings and to gain some clarity into what kind of nursing career I would like to pursue after graduation. The experience I gain in nursing school will be important as I transition into a nursing career to help me feel prepared for my career and equipped with the competencies required to provide high quality care.

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Kelly's Nursing Portfolio Copyright © by kellykormylo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.