Post-Interview Reflection

After interviewing one of the many people, I look up to in life I learned many interesting aspects about both nursing in general and leadership. For example, one of the many things she enjoys about nursing is how she can give back to people who lived a full life. She is currently working as a registered nurse in a nursing home in Massachusetts. One of her favorites every day actives is listening to a variety of stories her patients have. “They all have interesting lives, but just all in their own way”, was one of my favorite quotes she said. Even though her patients are living in the nursing home now they all lived many different lives before going there. For example, one of her patients was a teacher, and another one was a war veteran and they both had many stories on how they helped people in their past. This made me stop and think about all the different types of patients I will see throughout my carrier as a nurse.

Since she is a new nurse, she is not a manger, but she has many other leadership responsibilities. One of her favorite leadership roles is advocating for her patients. I was surprised to hear this was one of her favorite leadership roles, until she explained the impact it can have on a patient’s life. This role could be instructing the CNA to give the patient a shower, or have a provider change a medication that was not working for the patient. Many of these patients either are not respected in health care because of their age or health care conditions which causes them to be looked over by the provider. As a leader and an advocate for patients she is able to get them the help they deserve and need. While trying to advocate for her patients she found it challenging to get the providers to listen and respect her judgement call because how new she was in the nursing field. This reinforced my knowledge about the importance of advocating for yourself as a nurse and your patients.

Another leadership responsibility that she faced was allowing nursing students to shadow her. The nursing home she works at is located right next to a community college were students can receive their associates in nursing. Many of these nursing students have a rotation at the nursing home for clinical hours. “It’s really inspiring to watch a student have it click” was one of her quotes when talking about this leadership position. She loves having the opportunity to educate student in a non-hospital role, due to the impact it can have on their nursing career. She was explaining how many students did not want to come to the nursing home for clinical due to it being “boring”.  A few weeks into clinical many students came to realization that nursing wasn’t always about giving medication, or stopping bleeding, it was about being there for the patients no matter what their needs were. Many of these students dreaded coming to the nursing home because they wanted to go into a hospital to see more interesting things, but the first thing she told them was “listening is interesting too”. It takes a really skilled and caring nurse to sit down and talk about the patient’s past life or any concerns they are dealing with.

This interview reinforced my feelings about this leader by increasing my drive to become like her. Listening to how she cared and talked about her patients was very inspiring and encouraging. Even though the patient’s cases were not life threatening she still cared deeply for her patients and provided high quality nursing care. I will use this knowledge and nursing care into consideration in my student future and nursing career to ensure I take a second and listen to the patients story and not jumping to conclusions.