Hi there!
If you are here, then you are looking to hear a little bit more about my nursing journey and what has inspired me to become a nurse writer.
At the beginning of my education journey, I sought to be a physical therapist. I was a high school tri-varsity athlete (cross-country, soccer, and lacrosse) and went on to play lacrosse in college saw the benefit of physical therapy all around me. I did my first three years of my undergraduate education on track for physical therapy by way of kinesiology and biology.
My life changed so much in that third year. I married my husband. Something that was way out of the norm for young college students in southern California, and with that marriage came a tough decision: to break free from the 4-year track and move overseas, likely to school online and away from my sport. I took a very big risk, jumped the gun, and after my third year of school I moved overseas to be with my husband six months after we got married. I was very scared and so unsure of changing the usual college plan, I did not know what was in store for me.
Taking that risk changed everything in me.
What I did not know was that COVID was just around the corner; a time when my senior year of school would have been online anyway and my final lacrosse season would have been no more, a time when Italy was shut down, and (if I had waited to finish my senior year in California) I would not have been able to move to be with my husband for a very long time. Again, so much change.
I remember being in the yard of our home in Italy when I looked at my husband and said “What do you think about nursing?”. The conversation continued, and I mentioned that being a physical therapist is no longer who I was. I wanted to be with people in the middle of their hardest days, not after. This is no disservice to physical therapists, by the way, I have worked with many in the hospital setting and they are invaluable members of the team!
Then, with the loving support of my husband, I set my sights on nursing.
While overseas I used my credits to complete my undergraduate degree in Health Services Management and also got an associate’s degree in Italian Language and Culture (while I was there, why not?!). With that, I started looking into our next duty station and picking nursing schools. My shot-in-the-dark application happened to be the school I got in to: Duke University School of Nursing.
The Duke University School of Nursing is a second-degree program that is sixteen months long. That seems fast, but it is truly focused solely on nursing rather than any basic classes you may have taken in your first undergraduate degree. At the forefront of my mind was my personal goal as a nurse: “Help those heal their bodies so that they may have the opportunity to find the Lord”.
After school at Duke, I went on to work at Duke University Hospital in the Surgical Trauma ICU. I became exceedingly interested in trauma during my nursing education especially when I did my nursing capstone (final nursing course and clinical experience) in a burn ICU.
I spent a year in the SICU before the Army had us moving again. I saw so many different kind of trauma, transplant, and a wide variety of complex cases there and now, after our move and having our first baby, I am coming back into the bedside at an ICU in a local hospital.
Now, where does writing come in to play?
Well, now that I have had eight months or so off thanks to the Army moving us when I was eight months pregnant and post-partum complications, I have had a lot of time to reflect on myself and my goals for my career. Part of me has seen my success in research and writing in school; another part of me has come to see that my thoughts come in the form of writing, meaning that when I think, I hear it as if it were being written on a page. I am also very inspired by writing and know I can bring my passion for nursing through my writing to reach even more people than the bedside alone.
One of the sayings I would say to myself whenever I felt stressed during an event at the bedside, or when I was walking into work was “Someone needs me today”. This inspires me even still. Whether it is my clinical skills or my clinical experience that I may be able to share through my writing… someone needs me.
I hope to see you on the page,
Zorida