Nursing was never really my cup of tea.
I never pictured myself wearing whites and a fancy little white cap. As a child, my dream was to become an engineer, a civil engineer. This manifested as I grew up being fond of drawing different, sometimes weird, structures and solving complicated math problems. Taking up nursing never even crossed my mind.
All of these changed when one day, as I was just about to take a scholarship exam in my dream university, my uncle told me that I rather take up nursing. I refused then and there.
What about my dream? My aspirations? But he reasoned that nurses are the most in demand abroad. And that if I should choose a career, I should choose one that would give me a better fortune, which as he said at that moment, was nursing.
I knew right then that there was nothing I could do. With the financial crisis my family is going through and the cost of college education in our country, I could never survive a year in the university without the help of my uncles and aunts. So as I said yes to my uncle, I felt my dreams shattered into tiny little pieces that I will never be able to pick up again. The next moment, I found myself enrolling in a nursing school.
"Why did you take up nursing?"
This was the question that our teachers threw at us during the first few weeks of my freshmen life. Some answered that it was like their calling. And yes, many others said that it was the most in demand job abroad. And when it was my turn to be asked, I was so confused that all I answered was a short, "Why not?"
At the middle of the first semester, I took up a nursing aptitude test which, as they say, measures a students inclination towards nursing. And if you get a low grade at that, you should start shifting to other courses. When the results came out sometime after, I scored a 99% percentile rank. I was puzzled. I never thought I was inclined to be a nurse. Could the test be inaccurate? Well, I soon forgot about it.
My third year was the turning point of my life. This is when I first wore my whites-my clinical uniform and my dainty little white cap. This is also when we took up major nursing subjects. And this is when I met my very first patient, Josie, the woman who changed everything I thought nursing was all about.
Josie(not her real name) was a patient in our affiliated hospital's ob ward. She was about to give birth to her first child. I was assigned to her. I took her vital signs, checked on her contractions, their durations, and frequencies, listening to her baby's fhb, and all that a 3rd year nursing student is expected to do. In other words, I took care of her.
As she was en route to the labor room, I was kinda nervous. I felt for her. It was a deep concern that grew throughout the short period of time that I took care of her.
Would the delivery be okay?
Would she be safe?
Would the baby be fine?
These are some of the thousand things that came rushing to my mind. And I could only pray.
The delivery turned out to be fine. The baby was a healthy little girl, and Josie was safe. I received them again in the ward. I attended to them both. All the time I thought that I was just doing my job, that it was automatic, that it is what I should do as a nurse. But all of these changed when Josie was about to be discharged.
before she entered the car that will bring her home, Josie took my hand and muttered a little thank you. I was taken aback. I did not expect it. Well, I was just doing my job. But as i was returning to the ward, I looked around. I saw the nurses taking care of the sick people around me. I saw them being so thoughtful and caring. I saw their concern. And as I look at them, I saw me.
As I reached the nursing station in my ward, I was a changed person. I knew then that I was not just doing my duty just because I had to, nut because of my genuine concern for people, especially for the sick. That, I consider, was my birth as a true nurse. And I knew, for I felt it, that there was no greater feeling that a nurse would have than a patient smiling back at you, saying thank you for the care that she has given.
Now, after many humps and bumps along the road, most of them financial, I'm already a licensed nurse. And when people ask me why I took this job, my only answer is, "I didn't pick my job, it picked me."
