Tell the World Rebecca Winters NSG /17/2014

My Project As a nurse, I often find it difficult to ‘toot’ my own horn. I feel like my reward for a job well done is having my patient recover from surgery without complications. When looking at examples of past student’s projects, I was impressed by one nurses story about why she became a nurse. I have only ever shared my story with one person, my manager. So, I thought that I would step out of my comfort zone a write an article about how I became a nurse and submit it to Nurse.com in the hope that if published it might provide inspiration to others someday. Nurse.com

Article Requirements First, I checked to see if I could submit a personal story These types of stories were listed as End-of-Shift articles Second, I checked the author guidelines for specifics The only guideline for this submission was that the article needed to be 900 works in length Lastly, I proofread and edited the article prior to submitting the article They provided an address for all articles to be sent to

Why I Became a Nurse The short and sweet version is because of my father. When I was a young child, my father had a heart attack. He recovered thanks to a wonderful team of nurses, surgical technologists, and a great surgeon. For this, and various other reasons, I would became interested in surgical technology which would later lead me to a career in nursing. urgical/surgical-technology.jpg

Pathway to Nursing As a surgical technologist I was able to work with multiple healthcare professionals but out of all the other professions I was exposed to I was most intrigued by the nurses I worked with. They were able to employ a wider scope of practice in the surgical arena. Once I realized that I could provide more comprehensive patient care as a surgical nurse, I embarked on the journey that has led me to the BSN program with all of you here at James Madison University.

Success I am happy to report that I have finally been awarded a position on the cardiothoracic surgical team and will now be able to say that I am a part of a team that actually saves lives every day. It means the world to me to help give people their loved ones back, the way someone did for me as a child.