After shadowing a transition nurse in the Obstetrics department during my mother-baby clinical rotation in nursing school, I said to myself, “Now that’s the kind of nursing I want to do!” bathe the newborns and greet them as they arrive on planet earth. I imagined myself inspired and hopeful every day if I worked in that kind of environment. The highly coveted role was only for the select few appointed by God to fall into the perfectly timed preceptorship, which led to the chance that the person in the position that year would be about to retire, and you were the ideal candidate to take over of course. Unfortunately for me, I was not that particular individual in the right place at that right time.
In fact, throughout my sampling of specialties in nursing school, till the very end, I still did not know what niche I would find to be my calling. I had an affinity for pediatric nursing; however, ten years later, I found myself on an adult orthopedics medical-surgical floor, that happened to flex beds for pediatric patients. My training and certification allowed me to care for the admitted child in that adult unit on occasion. Thus, I had my regular fix of the little ones with fractured arms and surgically removed tonsils and appendices.
If you are in nursing school, and you haven’t yet felt compelled toward a particular specialty or role in nursing that makes you feel a sense of “this is what I’m born to do,” don’t worry, you are on a journey. Every experience, every new skill you learn, every patient encounter, view it as another piece of nursing knowledge that will be used again in the future and allow it to grow your passion.
Massaging a fundus or suctioning a tracheostomy may not be as satisfying as packing a debrided stage four wound for you, but know this, all we talented nurses have something to contribute to the vast patient population who need our caring and compassion. Those individuals are waiting for you to make that difference during what may be their most vulnerable life moments. Remember those poignant instances, especially when frustration and burnout creep in, that it’s in those moments your character and compassion for people develop, the moments for which you were born!