Why I Chose the Nursing Profession as a Career

TLynn · Apr 20, 2001

I wrote the following essay to send to this company offering a scholorship to nursing students. I wrote it the day my dad called me from the hospital saying he had been given three to six months to live.

I never sent it in, but it still impacts me each time I read it even after two years after graduation. It is a small part of my book I am writing titled "On God's Call."

"Why I Chose the Nursing Profession as a Career"

As a young girl, of 5, I knew that I'd be a nurse when I grew up. Having had no outside influence at this time it seemed an unusaul choice. Career days at school I'd be found dressed as a nurse in a white uniform and cap with a red cross and a plastic stethoscope.

As I grew older my need to be a nurse increased as my grandpa, my best friend's, health decreased. He'd been diagnosed years before with MS, I was pained to see a young man so full of life and hope lose his independence to care for himself. I, then knew that one day I'd be a nurse.

When I turned sixteen we laid my grandpa to rest. He may have passed on, but not before he touched my life, giving me the courage to follow my dream to be a nurse.

I married young and left my dream behind. Two years later I had a baby girl. At two, she began having chronic ear infections. We spent countless hours at the indian hospital, there I saw all types of nurses, ones I knew I could be like and those I termed "Broom Hilda."

Soon I became a single mother. Now divoriced, I thought I could not spare the time to attend nursing school. I felt my dream of 20 years was slipping away.

Soon after my grandpa had died, his wife became ill with Parkinson's. A picture froze in time five generations, taken when my daughter was only three months old. This was the last "healthy" moment in my grandma's life. Then as my grandma laid in an almost comotose state I watched as my last link to my grandpa slowly faded away. For three years she laid like this, dying just before my daughters 8th birthday. I knew, once again, that one day I'd be a nurse.

Now I am struggling to be a single mother and a nursing student. Which is the most important in my life? My daughter is, however nursing runs a close second or even tie. I'm not sure which, but I know it doesn't matter because I'll succeed at both.

As I write this I'm being told my dad will probably die soon. Again, I'm prepared, not only for his death, but to help care for him. Nursing school gives me the strenghth and the love of my family and my dad gives me the courage, to be a nurse.

However, to say it's a choice, is to say I had the power to choose. At this minute, of this hour, of this day I stand strong on two beliefs. The first is that I truly and whole heartedly believe with all my heart, body and my very soul that I didn't choose the nursing profession, the nursing profession chose me. The other belief is that, to me, the nursing profession is not a carrer, the nursing profesion is a way of life.

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