Reflection
While in high school I could not imagine a clear career path ahead of me, I had interests in various topics and could not picture myself in many of the career fields that aligned with these interests. This led me to the decision of taking a gap year after high school so I could figure out what I wanted to pursue. Between September and October, I began to contemplate what pathway I wanted to take, this is when I began to gain interest in nursing and what both nursing school and nursing would entail. When I came to the conclusion that nursing was something I wanted to have as an objective, I needed to begin by applying to post secondary. However I did not have all the prerequisites to apply for nursing programs, this is when I made the swift decision to go back to school and get my high school biology and chemistry courses, I was able to complete both courses in 4 months, this added to my desire of returning back to school and gave me the push to follow through with going to university after my uncertainty. Nursing appealed to me because during this period of my journey I had lived with my grandparents and learned how they needed to be taken care of, this also applied to my recently born baby sister. Both of these independent experiences assisted me in finalizing my decision in applying to nursing school. It only took a few months for me to go from being quite unsure of where my future was heading to deciding I wanted to apply to nursing school, to getting accepted.
My experience in nursing school so far has been both enlightening and intimidating, learning how to balance the workload, prioritizing my mental health and self-care has been quite the learning curve. Personally I have always been the type of person to neglect my mental health and tend to forget to take a step back and take care of myself in the process. I have come to realize that prioritizing self-care is essential especially when it comes to nursing school. Neglecting self-care can lead to burnout which is prevalent in the nursing field. According to a study conducted by Obradovic et al. (2013) found that “One of the major risks which leads to burnout is overwork” (p. 3). Which is something I hope to develop further and eventually want to master the balance between these aspects of my life. Another contributing factor as to what drew me to start my nursing school journey is my identity and perspective. As an Indigenous woman I wanted to spread awareness and combat anti-Indigenous rhetoric and treatment, specifically when it presents itself in the healthcare system. For instance a journal written to bring forth the experiences of nurses and patients when it comes to the treatment of Indigenous peoples in the healthcare setting highlights the treatment Indigenous people experience, “The gap between cultural safety rhetoric and practice was never more evident across the dataset than when participants spoke about the struggle to ensure rituals around dying and death were upheld” (Hunter & Cook, 2020). Even if non-Indigenous nurses possess cultural sensitivity it is not enough to ensure Indigenous patients cultural safety and wellbeing. Safety is the most important principle to care for when it comes to being a nurse as patient safety should always be the number one priority. Advocating for those who had a traumatic or damaging experience specifically with nurses is another component as to why I decided to begin nursing school, this is because I have a strong sense of justice, I Believe that each patient should be treated with dignity, this is why this component of the code of conduct resonates with my personal nursing journey, “Nurses respect clients’ rights and involve and support clients in making care decisions” (CNO, 2023). This aligns with my own values and I plan to uphold and continue to grow during my journey to ensure I maintain all the principles of the code of conduct to make sure my patients will be safe and taken care of.