What was one of your most memorable nursing experiences?

I help children, and sometimes they’re not doing really well. And for me it’s my most favorite when I just put forth my best effort to help them as a psychosocial human being for them to achieve wellness and to see that in the moment they can change their behavior. For me that’s a huge success. It’s just a tiny moment, but whenever they’re able to change their behavior in the moment it’s a big success.

What skills are most important for nurses?

As a nurse, and I would recommend anybody go into nursing who has an interest in it, it’s important to be timely — to do things on time. It’s important to be organized and to be flexible, but more than anything to provide care and to be caring for people is the most important.

What is the best advice you can give?

My best advice I would say is to do good self-care so that you can always bring your best self to your patients. So often families can’t be there for their patients and a nurse plays a real pivotal role in being a person who can care for someone who is unwell in their most needy moment. If you can imagine just being totally vulnerable and having somebody help you, it’s best if the person who’s helping you is whole themselves and can give of themselves and present, fully rested, balanced — provide as much care as possible.

What does it take to be a nurse in challenging times?

Nowadays with Covid and all the changes that have happened, for me it’s been a lot of role changes. My role has had to shift in between what part of the RN role at Shodair that I fill. In these times flexibility seems to be the most important. Just create wellness in your own life, show up, be on time, provide as much stability to your organization as you can. I feel like organizations need so much out of their workers these days that it’s important to provide the best nursing care that you can by just showing up.

Any final thoughts?

I would just reach out to anyone who’s thinking about being a nurse to really consider it. It’s so rewarding to put forth effort and have something change in the moment. There’s always feelings in our world where we wish we could change something for the better and as a nurse you really get to do that in the moment. Just changing one small thing for your patient or for your patient’s family, it can really change life for them when they’re in a state of vulnerability.

And anyone who feels like they could provide that level of care for someone, even just on a part-time basis or something, I would recommend being a nurse because it’s so rewarding in that you get to change people’s lives, and that’s rewarding. It’s also rewarding that you’re able to work in a variety of different settings, different hours — there’s a lot of different types of nursing that you can do. It’s important to learn a skill set that can benefit others, and if you have a skill set of nursing there’s always something you can do. I’m a busybody, I like to contribute, and I feel like there’s other people who are probably hungry to contribute as well, and nursing is very rewarding.