My Nursing Journey

[MindySF]

           I started my nursing journey eight years ago by getting my LPN. May of 2024, I graduated with my ADN, an RN. Summer of 2025 I am projected to graduate with my BSN. Finding my way to nursing wasn't easy. After graduating high school, I found myself lost for several years. I tried many majors and career paths, but nothing felt right. Then I learned about a program to get my LPN, once I started, I knew nursing was what I was meant to do. During my "lost" period, I wasn't just lost on my career path, I was lost as a person as well. I started a long battle with mental health. Depression and anxiety coming and going in waves. Not having a trajectory for my life made me fee made me feel as though I had no worth. Nursing has changed that. I will always fight a battle with mental health, but nursing gave me a purpose, gave me people to fight for and gave me some of my energy too. Nursing gave me a renewed focus in life.

            As an LPN I felt like I fit many roles, depending on where I was working. I worked in an assisted living facility and there I was "the nurse" making decisions for my residents. If something happened with a patient, I performed the assessment and determined if it was an emergency or something to be monitored at the facility. I also worked in a medical clinic performing the same tasks as RNs, patient care technicians, and athletic trainers. I didn't feel a really strong sense of nursing identity. The emergency room though, that's where I first started to feel a strong sense of nursing identity. Still, there were limitations that LPNs couldn't do, separating us from RNs. I was a nurse but was never felt seen as a "full nurse". Now, as an RN, I work on an inpatient surgical floor. Even though I was an LPN for 7.5 years, I still feel like a "baby nurse". It has been a completely different between being an LPN to being an RN.

            Nursing is hard, it is stressful, and it feels unforgiving at times. There are days tears are cried because a patient you have grown close to passes away while under your care. There are days when all your patients are on their call bell for pain medication but you're dealing with a potentially emergent situation. There are missed lunches, eight hours without a bathroom break, and working two hours late to finish charting. Nursing is always putting other people's needs above your own. You see things that will haunt you, but you can't tell anyone about. Your family asks about your day but all you can say is, "it was fine.” You're "on" all the time, even on your days off. People ask you questions about injuries and illnesses. If you witness someone get hurt, have a medical emergency, or witness a car accident you clock in and go into "nurse mode". But nursing is so worth it.

            What makes nursing worth doing? It is the patient that leaves you a card saying, "you were a light when I needed one.” A resident is giving you a gift they made at craft time. Or a pediatric patient coloring a picture just for you. What my favorite thing about nursing is knowing that I am making a difference in someone's life at one of their most vulnerable moments. I love that even on my worst days, when I am struggling to get through the day, there is always at least one patient that can make me smile or laugh. It is also the sense of family I share with all the other health care professionals I have worked with. There is no one else who has gone through the things that I have been through or had the experiences that I have. Nursing is one of the hardest but one of the absolute most rewarding parts of my life. No matter what my days hold, I will always be grateful to be a nurse.