3 Artifacts

Artifact #1

Practical Nursing Diploma

My first artifact is my Practical Nursing Diploma from Centennial College and my very first stethoscope. This is where my true nursing career started. I received this stethoscope from my aunt, who is also a nurse when I received my acceptance letter. I remember how excited and nervous I was to finally start my nursing journey and when I have bad days at work, or find an exam difficult in school, I try to remember how I felt when I received that acceptance letter. How excited I was to be where I wanted to be finally. This change in perspective helps regulate my nursing approach, to remind me that I am where I should be. In my college career, I was so lucky to be able to experience the things I did and see the things I was able to see. I can still remember my very first patient, the first time I remember pairing textbook nursing with practical nursing, and how it positively changed the outcome for my patient at the time, the first time I had an oncology patient, and how it changed my perspective on nursing altogether. I think without my practical nursing experience, I would be a completely different nurse today with a different set of values and beliefs.

Artifact #2

Coronary care and arrhythmia interpretation

My second artifact is an unofficial transcript from Fleming College. After finishing my Practical Nursing at Centennial College, I knew I wanted to continue my nursing education and I enjoyed the cardiology aspect of medicine. I started with doing my Coronary Care for RPNs. I enjoyed the content from the class and was fortunate enough to be able to apply it to my practice as I was working on a cardiology unit. I was then certified at the hospital where I work to be able to manage telemetry patients. I continued my education in cardiology care and did the arrhythmia interpretation course. It felt rewarding to be able to pair patient symptoms, signs, and clinical manifestations with what rhythm they were in and to be able to understand the big picture.

Artifact #3

Canadian Blood Services donation

Artifact number three is a picture of me donating blood through Canadian Blood Services. I was still a new grad when during this photo, but I understood the importance of blood donation. It felt like a full circle moment to be able to donate blood, and somewhere down the line, hang blood for my patient. I currently work on an oncology floor and unfortunately, we see a lot of blood-related cancers and often need to hang blood for our patients. Donating blood empowered me as a nurse. I feel as though, this allows me to provide care and service to the public to those who are in need without being in a clinical nurse-client setting.

Artifact #4

travel

This picture was taken from an airplane flying back into Toronto. For me, traveling is experience. I love to explore new cultures, food, people, their heritage, and the land they walk on, to understand people’s beliefs about what and why they do the things they do. I think this curiosity facilitates my culturally sensitive approach and equality for all. My nursing dream is to be a travel nurse and or teach. I would love to see different approaches to nursing from around the world and experience different nursing cultures. I believe that living in Canada, nurses need to be culturally sensitive and I think you can gain a lot of knowledge and skill by seeing different nursing approaches to cultural care.