Reflection on my Journey into Nursing
This is a reflection on the events in my life that have brought me to nursing. I use these events to reflect on my experience thus far in the Trent program, and where I would like my studies to lead me in the future.
I have had a very non-linear journey to get into the Trent nursing program. Out of high-school, I was accepted to Queen’s University for their Biochemistry program. I loved it there. I spent four years diving deep into organic chemistry, biochemistry, protein structure and function. In my fourth year, I was fortunate enough to participate in a research thesis in Dr. Edmond Chan’s lab. As much as I loved (and still love) biochemistry, I knew research wasn’t exactly for me, I craved a high-intensity healthcare setting.
I was also a residence don for three-years, a position where I was supporting students living in residence, responding to crisis situations, intervening in poor student conduct, and getting woken up about a million times to the on-call phone. Throughout this experience, I had a small taste of what it was like to respond to emergency medical situations, respond to mental health crises and engage in teamwork and problem-solving. This was the closest thing to healthcare I experienced, and even throughout the sleepless nights, I couldn’t let it go – something told me I was supposed to end up in healthcare.
In my summers, I am a tree-planter. This job involves planting as many trees as you physically can in a day, all the while you are covered in mud, slept in a tent on the cold ground, it’s snowing and raining at the same time, and your entire body hurts. Most days we were upwards of a 2-hour drive away from the nearest medical professional. In response to this, I was also the primary first-aid attendant. Most of the time my job was straightforward, providing physiotherapy taping modalities to planters with tendonitis. This role taught me the acute importance of the interdisciplinary team approach, as I was able to use first-aid and physiotherapy techniques. Through this experience, I anecdotally found planters had better outcomes when I was educated in both disciplines. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the multidisciplinary education approach in healthcare is well-utilized, particularly in the rural setting, where resources may be limited (Reed, et. al., 2021). I had gained firsthand experience of this benefit, being in a remote setting applying my education beyond my first-aid scope, only to then solidify this in the first semester at Trent. My job became even more interesting when a crew member had an anaphylactic reaction to a wasp sting and had to be air-evacuated by helicopter to the nearest hospital. This is when I knew this was the area in which I wanted to dedicate my future. This lit a fire in me, so I applied to medical and nursing school.
From there, I decided nursing fit into my lifestyle better than any other career in healthcare. For the next year, I learned to fly helicopte