Personal statement accelerated BSN

[NotA]

Hello everyone, I'm applying to several accelerated BSN programs and working on my personal statement. I would really appreciate your feedback on this text.

In 2014 there was a deadly incident in my city in Ukraine when a crushed car slipped on the sidewalk and injured several people. There at the scene, I wanted to be a nurse to help the victims. I believe the nursing profession is one of the few which allow to achieve personal wellbeing and serve the community.

Since my childhood, I had experiences helping people. Medical care in my country, Ukraine, is not in its best shape now, so a lot of care is on relatives and friends of a sick person. My mother has had severe health conditions as long I remember. I was helping and eventually taking care of her for my whole life including now. Starting with preparing healthy meals and planning her doctor's appointments and up to giving medications and measuring her blood pressure, calling an ambulance and providing first aid. My degree in biology helps me a lot as I have a scientific understanding and can evaluate information more critically.

After graduation from the university with bachelors and, later, masters degree in biology I started my career in education. As a teacher, I always pay attention to the health of my students. Being a biologist and getting some medical knowledge through my experiences makes it hard not to help my students right away and instead refer them to the school nurse. As teachers we are often the first responders during an incident, we should be aware of our student's health conditions. My critical evaluation was necessary during several incidents involving students' health. Being interested in the medical field, I interviewed our school nurse. Having a great experience in both the clinical setting and public health, she opened for me how broad and engaged the nurse profession is. Several years of a teacher experience embraced my interest in healthcare and public health in general. I realized that being a nurse, I can serve my community better.

Volunteering in a local hospital's emergency department gave me significant exposure to real-world healthcare settings. I was able to deal with patients while ensuring their comfort. Supervised by licensed nurses, I was taking vital signs and helping with various medical procedures: applying casts, intubation, stroke first response, telemedicine, charting, radiology diagnostics, etc. As an immigrant, I'm helping healthcare staff to communicate with Russian and Ukranian speaking patients confused by the US hospital procedures. Thre is no better feeling than accomplish the day and hear so many thankful words from parents. All this experience was convincing that I would be successful on a registered nurse career path.

I understand that the accelerated BSN program at Baldwin Wallace University is a challenging experience. I believe that my attitude about any of my academic work will help me to make this transition rewarding and successful. My academic work was rewarded by graduation with magna cum laude from both my bachelors and masters programs with GPA .3.82 and 4.0 respectively. I never stopped my education maintaining GPA 4.0 from my prerequisites classes while working full time.

As a nurse, I want to not only help people in strict healthcare sense but educate because I believe that not only treatment but prevention is the key to improvement of the overall health of the US population. I'm interested in children health as I think that they are more vulnerable compared to adults. As a teacher, I encountered many examples when proper health care gave a child an opportunity to be happy, as well as numerous examples of what can happen without it. I feel that my experience as a teacher and scientist in combination with my passion for medicine and helping people will make me a valuable member of the nursing profession.

[EmDash]

I'd probably delete the first paragraph. It feels very odd to bring up this event for only a few sentences and then never have it referred to again. Thus, it feels like it's just being put there to give an emotional opening that's only vaguely related to your actual points. Which then feels ingenuine to me.

Otherwise, it feels like you spend too much time on things that aren't really telling them about your skills and your accomplishments, such as about interviewing the school nurse or paying attention to your students' health, which is something I'd hope all teachers do. That doesn't necessarily indicate those teachers will make good nurses though. I'd maybe focus more on this aspect: "My critical evaluation was necessary during several incidents involving students' health." Particularly to demonstrate certain traits you possess that will help you when becoming a nurse.

With the volunteering, give your experiences but also give them something to show you did those things well or how you did those things in a way that demonstrates your abilities or good traits. Kind of like when you write out a resume, you don't just list your job duties. You write it in a way that you focus on the accomplishments you had while doing those duties.

Everything should lead back to the main traits you want them to know you have.