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Growing up with a highly feminist mother, I disdained the traditional girly choices. I was absolutely positively sure that I would never be a teacher, I would never be a nurse and I definitely didn’t like the color pink. 

 

I got into the health care field by accident. An acquaintance who had been in a bad car accident and suffered severe head trauma, needed a new personal care attendant (PCA) just about the time I was deciding that I did not, after all, want to be an accountant. After a few years with her, I decided to get myself certified as a nursing assistant. I didn’t need it, but I thought it would help me be better at my job.

 

Eventually she moved out of state, and since I already had the nursing assistant certification, I applied to a local metropolitan hospital. In 1988 I started in the Emergency Department. In about 1993 I moved to a clinic float position, and it was working at a clinic one day I got a suggestion from a nurse.

 

She mentioned that a nursing scholarship was being offered, and thought that I might be a good candidate. I’d been working as a nursing assistant for years, and I enjoyed my work. On top of that, there were only three days to assemble the myriad of paperwork, recommendations and school records to apply for this scholarship. I completed it almost more to see if I could, than any other reason. I made it to the final round, and was asked to come in to be interviewed.

 

Surprise, the ‘brief interview’ turned out to be eight people asking me endless questions that really boiled down to two. One, why was I a good bet for this rather expensive scholarship that would take me through a bachelors degree, and two, what kind of nurse did I want to be?

 

My answer to the first question was to note that I had already worked for this hospital for 14+ years. Chuckles went around the table.

 

The second question was the more thought provoking. What kind of nurse would I want to be? By this time I’d worked in the Emergency Department, in Urgent Care, and in many clinics including Medicine, Surgery, Podiatry, Orthopedic, Neurology, OBGyn and Pediatric. I thought back to the many nurses I’d worked with, and one, a Nurse Practitioner in Pediatric Clinic, stood out. She was retiring now after having practiced for over twenty years, and among her current clients were the grandchildren of patients she’d seen as children. She was patient, she was knowledgeable and she was highly trusted by her patients and by their families. As I was trying to distill all this into a reasonably coherent and a reasonably short answer to the sixteen pairs of eyes fastened on me, what I said was “When she tells them to take this medicine, or encourages that exercise, or recommends a rear facing car seat for an infant, her patients aren’t listening just because of her education and her expertise. They are listening because of the quality of the relationship she has with them. Her voice is not just the voice of their primary care provider; it’s the voice of a friend. That’s the kind of nurse I want to be.”

 

Nursing school was absorbing and frustrating and long before I graduated, I had come to the conclusion that nursing credits were akin to dog years. In order to cram the extensive body of knowledge required to be a nurse into a two year degree, some of the classes were ludicrous in terms of how much knowledge was expected per credit. As a minor example, the two sequential one credit classes known as Medication Administration are in reality a mind boggling information dump of pharmacological information, and if the student is not very comfortable with his or her knowledge of physiology, remediation will be required.

 

In comparison, the bachelor’s degree level classes, which built on this highly compressed foundation of information, were presented at a more relaxed pace. The classes were more focused on topic or type of patient; geriatrics, research, community health and my favorite in terms of inspirational potential; nursing leadership. It was in the nursing leadership class, which was taught by an instructor finishing her doctorate, that I realized that I wanted to continue my education.

 

At this point I’d become confident in my ability to study while working. I was willing to incur the student loans it would take to complete a doctoral program. I considered pursuing a Physician’s Assistant degree, as there was a local school that provided them. I thought about taking pre-med and becoming a doctor. I was in a happy glow of accomplishment and potential, and I considered all of this from the perspective of what did I really want to do.

 

I’ve worked with medical doctors for years. They are very knowledgeable; that is undeniable. However the approach that I saw over and over was the same. Find and solve “the problem”. The patient was essentially a battleground. The disease, or the disorder or the injury was the opponent and the knowledge, techniques, the tools and the medications are the arsenal in that fight. The Physician’s Assistant’s that I’ve worked with have a similar orientation, which makes a certain amount of sense.

 

The advanced practice nurses had a different perspective. This wasn’t a surprise to me, as both my experience as a nursing assistant and my very first class in nursing theory had informed me of this difference. To go back to my textbook, a true understanding of the holistic nature of human beings requires appreciation and evaluation from not just the physiological, but the cognitive, emotional, spiritual and social perspectives.[1] From that perspective, a physician was only focused on a fifth of the patient. The first clinical experience I had as a nursing student had placed me with an instructor who in addition to a teacher, was also a parish nurse. She required all her students to address the spiritual aspect of all our patients.

 

Yes, I wanted to be a doctor, in the sense that I wanted to be a capable and caring provider of primary care. I realized that I did not want to be a doctor of medicine. I am currently a student in the Psychiatric/ Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program in the online program at The College of St. Scholastica. I plan on pursuing clinical experiences and classes so that I can be certified as both a Psychiatric and a Family Practice provider.

 

Someday when I finish my NP doctorate, I hope to work in a need area, preferably rural, preferably tribal. In that perfect world, I'd also be finished with my Healing Touch certification and my dogs would be therapy animals where I worked.

 

I am proud to be seeking a doctorate of nursing, because the multi-faceted patient centered approach of nursing is the kind of doctor that want to become.