Chance’s Story on His Personal Journey

All right guys, in this lesson we’re going to take a look at my personal nursing journey. Everybody’s nursing journey is different, whether it’s from the time that you decide that you want to be a nurse, maybe it’s when you’re a little kid or maybe there’s something that happens in your life that’s really important and that really helps you to take that path. So Miriam’s going to ask me a few questions about my journey so that I can share it with you and maybe be a little of an inspiration. Okay. Why and how did you know you wanted to be a nurse? I’d spent the first 10 years of my life as an adult,  as a vet tech. So I was a veterinary technician and so it was my responsibility to care for animals and essentially complete the nursing parts of, caring for all these sick animals and puppies and kittens and giving them their shots and all that stuff. 

And what I ended up figuring out along the way was that it was really important for me to carry on that because I felt like I had fulfilled that chapter in my life and I realized that the more I did it and the more I helped people, that that knowledge base helped me to help to propel me into that idea of caring for people. And that’s kind of the angle that I went. And then I, then I saw that there were a lot of career opportunities as well as taking care of, taking care of people and that’s the reason I went into it. Awesome. What did your application process look like? The application process was a little bit different than everybody’s. I initially applied for a local community nursing program, and they’re really high ranked. And I went in and took the test and had all the prereq’s and didn’t get in and it was really disappointing and so when I transferred that process into, the online college that I went to, it was very different. 

It was very much a frequent one-on-one calls with, they call them, program mentors. And so as I went through that process, I would have to make sure that I met all their prerequisites. And then once I got the prereq cause it’s done, then I had to get like two letters of recommendation, fill out like this essay, fill out an application. And then finally they selected a list, and then they finally told me, that I got in. Awesome. Okay. What was the hardest part of school for you? Work life balance was the hardest part. The school I went to was very much for working adults. So on top of nursing school I was working full time. And then when I started in nursing school, my wife and I had just had our twins, so they were about six months old when I started. 

So I’m balancing getting the girls to daycare and going to school and then coming home and then studying. And then I got to make sure I have time off for clinicals or labs or what have you. And it was, it was very much that balance was, the most part just to make sure I had to sleep. Yeah, that’s hard. What is one thing you wish someone had told you about nursing? I wish somebody would have told me a more solid way to prepare for the end clicks. When I started getting ready for the NCLEX , it was, Hey, you have to use this program because it’s included and you have to get a certificate of completion. And I didn’t, I walked into the NCLEX not feeling prepared at all and I didn’t also understand the gravity of what the intellects meant. Uh, and here in Texas we have to take, uh, the jurisprudence and there was actually more information about the jurisprudence than there was for, the NCLEX itself. 

Okay. What is one thing you’ll never forget about your experience in nursing school? One thing that I’ll never forget is the, like the closeness that you get with people in your cohort or your class. Like that was something that was really, really interesting because even though we met on a relatively infrequent basis, like we’d meet, actually meet together and get together every couple of months. It was every time we were always really close-knit. We always spent a bunch of time, but they only went in hanging out with each other at clinicals and then we would go have lunch because our clinical days were full 12 hour days that we were working in the entire shift. And, but it was just that camaraderie that you get with your classmates? Yeah. Okay. What is the most memorable patient story you can think of? The most memorable? 

So I went through a critical care residency, which was like an 18 week program and it’s classroom, it’s clinicals, it’s tests, it’s basically a nursing school, on steroids. And you go through the clinical residency and then they turn you loose. And I had been out on my own for maybe three or four weeks. And then my charge nurse was like, Hey, we have this really bad level one coming in. And they’re like, it’s an internal decapitation. And, if you know anything about internal decapitations, it’s that they are, they’re non-survivable energy injuries. And what that means is that I am essentially provided the family or the patient has previous or prior requested that they want to be a donor and then you prepare them to be a donor and that’s a whole new task in itself. They just, there’s so much that goes into it. 

And we ended up doing for that patient, we also ended up doing a bedside thoracotomy and  like the case was so complex we had to get ethics involved and there was just, it was, I got, I got a whole lot of training all at once. I’m in the hospital, I worked at this. If you work one year here, it’s workload, it’s like working seven years anywhere else. And uh, that day I learned, I got, I earned it, I earned it. Do you have any regrets about becoming a nurse? No. Education helps me to pass on, uh, what knowledge I do have. And I think from that standpoint, helping other nurses succeed is in nursing students and new nurses. And whatever stage you’re in, that’s always really fulfilling. So what is the worst thing that you have seen in practice? So for worst, you have to think about, is this something, uh, like the gross things that I deal with every day or is this things that are like really heavy emotionally and for me, it, I think about two cases that I had. 

The first one was a 14-year-old patient who had been in a car accident, and he had been burned. And so for that patient I had to take him to the tank, and we had to do his wound care and like give him nitrous, and he got his drugs, and he’s still screaming and like you don’t forget those screams. Because pain is so intolerable. And then the second one was a 14 year old who had, uh, tried to commit suicide with a gun. And, those, they’re just heavy because there’s so much more that goes into being like emotionally invested in your patients. Like you want to take care of them, you want to do all the little tasks, like give them the medication and make sure their chest tubes in and all that stuff. But it also, there’s also that rapport building that you’re in there and you’re, you’ve got families involved and like both of those cases were extremely difficult and go home and take care of, you know, at the end of the day  have a really difficult patient or even a difficult pair who are really busy, uh, go home, go to sleep, come back the next day. 

But when you have those kinds of cases, it’s, he lives a little asleep, and they’re a little bit more difficult to come back from. 

How do you balance work life balance as a nurse? 

Create a balance. The big thing is sticking to schedules. It’s one thing that I wasn’t ever really good at in nursing school, but as I’ve grown up,, one of the things that I’ve really learned to do is like, I am dedicating this time to do these things and I’m dedicating this time to do these things. I understand that if I want to go to the gym, for instance, I know that my day has to start at 4:30. It’s the only way it works, you know, Hey, and then I’ve got, you know, work from eight to five and then if I’m doing any other school stuff, it has to happen after that. But, and then also being open and having good communication with the entire family and having them understand that, that these things are important because maybe other people rely on me to do these things. But then also when the time comes, I’m going to dedicate all of my time and energy to you. 

Yeah. 

Okay. What is your advice for the future students? Keep your nose down. Be humble. And understand that being a nurse is a continual lifelong learning journey. You’re never gonna learn everything from one nurse. You’re never gonna learn everything. In one instance. You’re going to learn something and then, uh, evidence is going to come out and it’s going to totally just change. We don’t do that anymore. So always be accepting to, uh, to new ideas. And always take advice from those people, who are, who’ve been around for a long time. Hopefully this conversation today helps you guys understand what my nursing journey was. Light so that it can inspire you. So like we always say, go out and be your best self today. And as always, happy nursing.