#9

    I have chosen to go into nursing for my career. I am currently working as a tech (a nurses aide) at a local hospital and am getting experience in the hospital setting. My sister-in-law played a very large role in my decision for my career, but so far it is exactly what I want to do with my life. Even as a tech I can tell that helping people is something I want to do.
    During this course I did a little bit of research about all of the different jobs that can be done with a degree as a Registered Nurse. This really entices me into this profession because if I get tired of bedside nursing I can always go to an office or educational job or something along those lines. However, with bedside nursing there is rarely a dull moment and depending on the unit you are in you see so many different things. While the pay for RNs isn't exactly what I want it to be, its something I will sacrifice for the hours. A full time RN position in Evansville is three 12 hour shifts per week. This gives four days off per week which is rare with most other professions.
    The hours and difference in jobs is a huge reason I have chosen this as my career along with my interests and values. I enjoy helping people very much. As a child I always wanted to go to medical school and be a surgeon because trauma things really interest me and I find them very fascinating. So many things can go wrong and change in the blink of an eye with trauma patients and it takes very good nurses and doctors to keep these people alive in many cases.
     I was taught as a young child to always be dependable, responsible, and honest. These are values I take very seriously and think they will help me tremendously in my career as a nurse. In order to be a nurse, and any job really, you need to be dependable, responsible, and honest. If you are none of these it is very unlikely that you will get a job. Because I have a job in the same place I want to work as an RN, I make it a point to always be on time, do my job to the absolute best of my ability, and if I screw up I am the first one to admit it. These are qualities you need in the nursing field, and many other fields also.
   After this class, I will actually be enrolling in the Nursing program at Henderson Community College where I will be a direct admit into the program in the Fall of 2013. I will graduate from Nursing school in 2014 where I will most likely get a job as an RN in the Surgical Trauma Cardiovascular ICU that I work in now. In order to reach my goals I just need to do the best I can in school and get through it as soon as possible so that I can get my career underway.

#8

    In a perfect world I would be a Critical Care Doctor. I would have went to Indiana University and studied Biology as a pre-med student directly out of high school. After graduating in four years, I would apply and get in to IU's Med School in Indianapolis where I would go through school and hopefully become a Trauma Surgeon. If this were a perfect world, at this point in my life I would be in my first year of Medical School in Indianapolis.
    Ten years from now, in the perfect world, I would be working for Evansville Surgical Associates in Evansville so I could be close to my family while doing what I love. Trauma surgery is something that I find extremely interesting and I would have loved to take a career path that would have led me to my dream job, unfortunately that's not how life always works out. As far as short-term goals go in the perfect world, they would be to graduate at the top of my class in Medical School and then to land the job I want at Evansville Surgical Associates.
    From previous blogs, you know that I am a nursing major. While it is still in the healthcare field and I will work directly with doctors, it is not the same at all. I have chosen that career that fits my life right now in this non-perfect world. I plan to work in a Trauma Unit so I will still essentially be seeing and doing similar things to what I depicted in the "perfect world" scenario.

#7

     Upon taking the decision making quiz to figure out how I make decisions, I learned that I am a spontaneous/internal decision maker. The website says these types of decision makers make decisions quickly, rarely establish specific plans, get bored easily and will take risks among other things. All of these things are extremely accurate in how I go about my life.
     When I decided to go into Nursing I thought about it for approximately a week. When thinking about a career most people would think about it for longer than that, but I talked to my sister-in-law who is an RN and decided fairly quickly that this is what I wanted to do. Nurses are extremely busy and have lives in their hands while they're at work and this is the type of setting I want to work in.
     While I do have a very specific plan for my career, that is nearly the only thing in my life that has structure. I fully believe that if it weren't for college and my advisors, I wouldn't even have a plan for my career either. My day-to-day life consists of a calendar in my phone that I add things to if I remember. I do very well remembering things on my own, but it is hard for me to just make specific plans a long time in advance. As far as nursing goes this trait could help and hinder me. Since every day as a bedside nurse is so different, it will be good for me to not have things set in stone, but sometimes it can also be good to follow a guideline for things and I could see that being challenging for me.

#6

       The second career I have chosen to research is a Nurse Practitioner. I hope to eventually continue my education and become an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, but it will be a few years down the road. Nurse Practitioners work alongside doctors and provide much of the same care to patients. They do physicals, diagnose and treat common illnesses and injuries, interpret diagnostic tests, prescribe medications, perform procedures, and educate patients and their families.

       There are 25 states in the US that allow NP’s to practice independently from doctors, however in all Acute Care NP’s follow doctors. In the hospital setting, the NP’s do rounds with doctors and sometimes even do rounds on the doctor’s patients while he or she is in surgery or busy with other patient needs. This makes the doctor’s job much less grueling, but I have noticed at my current job that if a patient is particularly ill the doctor will make the rounds no matter what.

         An NP’s average salary is $75, 000 per year, but that varies depending on where you are working at. The only bad thing is Acute Care NP’s will likely have to work weekends, holidays and possibly even be on-call. This would not necessarily be the case in a clinic setting though. As with being an RN there are so many different directions you can go once you obtain your Masters of Science in Nursing aka a Nurse Practitioner.

*All information from http://explorehealthcareers.org/en/Career/75/Nurse_Practitioner

#5

        The first career I have chosen to research is a Registered Nurse. I am very certain in what I would like to do in my career and I know that nursing is it. According to the website Explorehealthcareers.org, “registered nursing is among the Top Ten Occupations with the largest job growth.” Reading this makes me extremely happy because I know it is something with good job placement after college, but knowing that it is one with the largest growth is very reassuring.

         RN’s are responsible for so many things and there are so many different options even within the realm of nursing. As a bedside nurse, RN’s will manage care plans, do patient education, and other various things that are determined by patient needs. Specifically I would like to be a critical-care nurse and work in an ICU setting. I prefer this type of setting because you only have two or three patients versus the 5 to 10 you may have on the floor. There is a closer connection to the patient and you are able to provide better care.

         Working in hospitals is the most common place for a nurse to work, but there are “home health and public health nurses [that] travel to their patients’ homes, schools, community centers, and other sites.” What I like most about this career is that if you don’t like on aspect of the job, you can completely change and do something else without having to go back to school. In the hospital I work at there are some RN’s that only work in offices and do not do bedside work.

 

*All information from http://explorehealthcareers.org/en/Career/21/Registered_Nurse_RN

#4

The following are my scores of the Values Inventory

Achievement: 14
Belonging: 5
Concern for Environment: 4
Concern for Others: 11
Creativity: 10
Financial Prosperity: 15
Health & Activity: 9
Humility: 10
Independence: 14
Loyalty to Family/Group: 13
Privacy: 15
Responsibility: 15
Scientific Understanding: 5
Spirituality: 6

    Upon doing the values inventory I learned what I pretty much already knew. I strongly value acheivement, privacy, independence, responsibility, financial prosperity and loyalty to my family. I believe these are good values to have and they are ones that I have learned from my parents and even some from my older brothers. While I should probably have more concern for spirituality, creativity and concern for others, I do not belive the values I do have are bad ones.
    I would say my main values are independence and responsibility. I have lived on my own since right out of high school and although I am very close with my parents, it is good to have my own space. I am financially on my own also, which I believe adds a whole new level of independence and responsibility. I was raised in a family where responsibility was a high priority from my parents. My three older brothers and I are all very responsible and almost never miss a day of work.
    I believe in order to keep a job you have to be both responsible and independent. A place of employment will not keep you if you're constantly late and cannot do anything on your own. The job I have now has a strict policy in place to keep you responsible and if you're late a certain amount of times you eventually lose your job. I also highly value achievement because if you don't have the will to succeed and do your best then you will not accomplish anything. It is very important to me to acheive to the best of my ability.

#3

    I have numerous interests and do alot of things for fun. I mentioned it in my first blog, but I am a HUGE New York Yankees fan! I go to atleast one game per year and hope to go to many more since my brother has recently moved to New York City. During the summer, I am usually found at a baseball field. From major league to little league, I love it all. I played softball until highschool and still play in co-ed leagues with my friends whenever possible. As much as I love baseball, I love my nieces and nephews even more! In free time away from school and work I am always at my brothers house playing with his kids. They mean everything to me and I can't imagine my life without them.
    I enjoy most of my health professions classes because they pertain to what I want to do with the rest of my life. As far as music goes, I listen to it all. Right now in my car I have a mix CD of rap and pop from 2000, but right below that I have Theory of a Deadman, Jason Aldean, Lil Wayne, and Luke Bryan. I would consider myself a country music fan for the most part, but I like a little bit of everything.
    My favorite movie is The Shawshank Redemption with How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days at a very close second. I like nearly anything Morgan Freeman and Matthew McConaughey are in. My favorite television shows change from time to time...and I have a bunch of them. First and foremost, NCIS is number one. After that comes  The Voice (I love Blake Shelton), The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and a Food Network show called Chopped. I guess it's fairly obvious that I watch alot of television. This is mostly the case during the winter though because very year around this time I turn into an old lady and don't get out of the house much. If there's one thing I cannot stand...it's being cold!