2017 AMRI SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM ESSAY BY LEAH BEDATSKY
Author: Leah Bedatsky
School: University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Area of Study: Nursing
Growing up around someone who is ill puts life into perspective of just how fragile it truly is. My father was sick the entire time I knew him; it was a part of who he was. As a young, little girl, I strove to try to make him feel better because I was daddy’s little girl. As I got older, I became aware that he was sick with something that could not be cured, no matter how much I took care of him. However, this didn’t deter me from becoming a nurse. It only motivated my desire to care for others and try to impact those in need in whatever ways I could. My childhood dealing with someone who was sick helped lead me to want to have a career in healthcare. It was not always clear that nursing was the path I wanted to take, but as I grew, my passion for caring for others grew as well. I began to educate myself with careers in healthcare and I started to identify myself as a nurse.
Who I am aligns with what I believe a nurse to be. I identify myself as compassionate, driven, hardworking, encouraging, and focused on discovering how to treat a patient in need. I feel that being a nurse means being there for someone when they have no one else. It means caring for them regardless of their demographics and background. Being a nurse means going the extra mile to bring a smile to someone’s face when they are in a low place in life. Most people go to a hospital or doctor’s office to feel better, and being a nurse means understanding the science behind health and the body, translating what is wrong into a meaningful answer to how to help the people who need it. It is understanding this nursing language and using it to impact the world around me that motivates me to be a nurse.
For me it is simply not good enough to be a good nurse. I want to be a good person and an extraordinary nurse. During the time I have spent at hospitals, I have witnessed nurses not caring for their patients, ignoring their needs and prioritizing themselves over the patient’s well-being. I find it difficult to believe that people who are in good health can so easily cast aside the needs of those who are ill and in need of assistance. I do not believe that all nurses are like this, but I choose to be better than the ones who are. I want to use my time I have in this world to make it a better place by filling it with love and by doing everything I can to make my patients smile, laugh, and leave feeling better than when they came in. It seems that more often in the world today, animosity and cruelty are more prevalent. As a nurse, I hope to leave the world a better place than it was when I came into it. To do this, it requires of me to put my needs aside for the betterment of others. I have chosen to become a nurse so that I can make someone smile or laugh. I am becoming a nurse to be able to change the world one patient at a time.
It is my goal in life to become a neonatal nurse practitioner. I desire to work with premature and sick infants, and their families, to help them grow strong enough to go permanently join their families at home. I spent an internship working in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) working first hand with special care nursery staff, and I instantly knew that it is where I belong. To be able to aid a helpless infant at the start of its journey through life is the most meaningful work I could dedicate my life to doing. Although my passion of caring for others and nursing was rooted in my experiences with an unhealthy father, it embodied itself in becoming a special care nurse. In the NICU, the only way an infant can communicate what is wrong to the world is through its vitals and bodily functions. It will be my responsibility as a nurse to be the lifeline of the sick infants who cannot depend on themselves. Even furthermore, I must be an educator and caretaker for the parents, who want nothing more than to take their child home. It is my goal as a future nurse to understand how I can use the science of nursing to understand what is wrong and what must be done to find a resolution. Being a nurse is a stepping stone to a greater goal that will enable me to provide meaningful, innovative patient care.
I have already devoted four years of college toward educating myself on the science of the body in preparation for nursing school. During these years, I volunteered as an emergency medical safety attendant, interned at hospitals and became a certified phlebotomist to have a doorway into the medical field. However, I developed other characteristics of nurses by volunteering with children, working with kids, and being a teammate to those around me. I am pursuing my dream of becoming a nurse by going back to school to get a second bachelor’s degree in nursing so that I can commit my life’s work to others. I have been accepted into the nursing program at University of Nevada Las Vegas, where my dreams will become a reality and I will obtain my nursing license.
However, my education will not stop after I graduate from nursing school. There is always a need for education and the beauty of science is that it is always evolving. There are new researches, studies and practices emerging in the healthcare world that can be used to expand my knowledge. Continued education is a valuable aspect of healthcare because it allows nurses and other health care professionals to be up to date with the best patient care. Life support is a skill that no one ever wants to perform, but is crucial when it does need to be used. PALS, which is pediatric advanced life support, and ACLS, which is advanced cardiovascular life support, are two styles of continued education training to provide healthcare professionals with the tools to deal with real, clinical emergencies. Both practices involve specified training on being an effective and efficient team member who can identify cardiac and respiratory trauma patients in need of life support.
By developing my education of PALS and ACLS, I equip myself with the skills needed recognize and intervene with medical emergencies. As a nursing student, I will be faced with all aspects of healthcare settings, helping treat patients in pediatrics and neonatal, pregnancy, geriatrics and anywhere in between. With this, I will be using the skills of being a high performing, dynamic team member who can understand the patient’s signs and symptoms. Beyond that, I must execute the proper recognition and intervention of patients who are suffering from cardiac or respiratory arrest causing them to need life support treatment. It is not simply enough to have training in basic life support; I need to use the skills of providing high-quality CPR and AED in a timely manner that saves lives. The skills also involve prevention, intervention and treatment to help the patient recover and work toward continuing a healthy life.
On the journey to accomplishing my career goals, I have already accomplished many steps to help open opportunities in the healthcare field. One of my proudest accomplishments is that I have already graduated college with a bachelor’s degree. I was able to expand my knowledge by gaining information about the body through the courses I took. Being able to understand how the body works on a microscopic and macroscopic level makes the healthcare work very interesting. I used this education to pursue nursing, which I am anticipating growing my education of patient care. It is my goal to be in the top of my class for nursing school, as I want to excel both as a student and a nurse. I am very passionate about giving quality healthcare, which means that standing out as a nursing student and mastering my education is a priority. I hope to work in a healthcare setting while I go to school to develop my experiences with patient care. I intend to get a job as a nurse soon after graduating from nursing school so I can begin applying my skills and positively impacting those in need. No matter where I find myself, whether it be in hospitals, clinics or schools, the life support skills will always be necessary. It can’t be known when someone has a heart attack or respiratory failure. But what I can be sure of is that I will have the basic life support skills to help save someone’s life.
Beyond being able to apply these skills during the diverse experiences I will face during nursing school; my future will be dependent upon life support for pediatrics. My career path for the next chapters of my life will align with the skill of PALS. After I graduate from nursing school, I want to get a job working in special care nurseries and neonatal intensive care units. I will gain the necessary experience to continue my education with the goal of becoming a neonatal nurse practitioner. This encompasses working in the level three and four NICUs, which work with the highest trauma neonates. Having a full understanding of PALS is essential to have immediate intervention and recognition of emergency situations. In these intensive care units, the neonates will need the highest level of attention and best care for their survival and growth. The skills of PALS encompass performance of high quality infant CPR, understanding respiratory distress and how to manage and treat patients who have undergone cardiac and pulmonary emergencies. It is likely that in a NICU, I will need to use the skills of PALS and it will be essential for helping those infants in need. I hope to use those skills of PALS, as well as continued education, to accomplish my career goals.
My long-term goals of becoming a neonatal nurse practitioner involve returning to school and obtaining a master’s degree or a doctorate in nursing. I will dedicate the time and effort to gain the experience in special care nurseries to be able to return and further my education. When I return to education, I will not only grow my nursing knowledge, but I will develop new skills that will contribute to proving the best healthcare possible. Being a nurse practitioner pushes myself to be a better nurse, while holding the responsibilities and leadership of a practitioner. If I can continue learning and applying what I know to help people, it will only make the world a better place.
No matter where I go with my career, I want to be doing something that will help people. I want to know that when I die, there have been people who got to live a fuller happier life because of me. My career goals are not simply to graduate nursing school, become a nurse and someday a neonatal nurse practitioner. My career goals are to change the way people live; I want people to live healthier and happier. Making people smile, making people feel loved and cared for, and making people feel better is one of the best things I can do with my life. Working in healthcare allows me to the opportunity to encounter people who I can impact their life multiple times a day. I desire to be positive, hopeful, caring and responsive every day of my life. Being a nurse challenges me to accomplish the greater goals of helping other, caring for those in need, and providing the best health care environment for healing and growth.