I'm a girl. In case you didn't already know that. I chose nursing as my primary profession, and artistry as my secondary. Makes sense, right? Kind of...the norm? Lots of women become nurses and lots of nurses are women.
But would I have chosen differently if I were born a male? Yes. I would have definitely gone into architecture, or construction. Something to do with my hands, drawing, and math all together. In fact, architecture was my first choice of profession but at the age of 17, I was frightened by a profession dominated primarily by males...and *business suits* (ew). So nursing it was.
That is not to say that If I were male, and still had my current personality, that I wouldn't make a great male nurse....I would. But would I have ever even considered nursing if I were male? Or did I consider it because I was female?
It's interesting to think about. What about you? Would you have chosen differently if you were born the opposite sex? Are you an uncommon gender in a profession dominated by the other gender? What made you choose that?
I wish we didn't live in a society where jobs are still "genderized". But we do. We probably always will. However more and more males are coming into nursing and I support them 100%. I think, 98% of the time, males make great nurses. Chances are if they are a guy and chose to go into nursing, they are also compassionate men, caring, sensitive and loving too, and yet have the male features of being good under pressure, assertiveness and getting things done fast. I wish men weren't so afraid to come into the profession because they feel they are outnumbered by women. And it is true, they are severely outnumbered. At my current workplace, I work with ZERO coworker male nurses. I have worked with three over the course of the past five years, but only zero currently. The only males around are......can you guess it? Can you? Yep. Doctors.
So, men out there job-less or in high school and don't know where to take your life, consider nursing! Consider the benefits for you:
- you get to be around women alllll the time. And nice women (mostly!) too.
- you (usually) work 3 days a week, 4 off.
- you can travel anywhere and still be a nurse
- there has got to be over 10,000 different types of nursing positions, all with the same degree
And there are other reasons too I swear, Im just exhaustified and need sleep and my brain power stopped at exactly 7:30 when I got off shift tonight. But really guys, we need you!
Look for another post coming tomorrow! For now,
~WNB
.
10 + Years in Nursing In Medical Surgical, Women's Health, Telemetry and Informatics.
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Monday, September 26, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Saving the World, sort of.
Hey all! So, I survived. I passed my exam....only two more important exams to go, and one of those gives me a really big license.
Anyway, I've wanted to post this blog since Tuesday, but haven't had the time to dedicate to it, until now.
This semester in our community clinical (last one!) my group has been circling around a couple of different health care (public health) agencies around the local "vulnerable populations" near my school. I live in New Jersey, you can imagine a *couple* different locations I *might* be talking about.
Working in all of these different agencies helping lots of different age groups but primarily young women, I noticed one thing: These young women were interested in health care. Any type of health care. Me. They wanted to know how to get where I was in life. How to work in a hospital. How to take care of patients in any setting. To them, nursing was just this "thing" that they could do that was easy...but it was just a thought and they weren't sure how to even think about doing it.
Our assignment throughout the semester (as a group) was to work with specific modules in order to teach these young women about a new topic every week. Topics range from Child development, to women hygiene, violence, STDs, Sexual health, etc.
So, based on this thought that I had that a LOT of these young women shrugged off our existing topics but were profoundly interested in nursing, I thought-- Why isn't that one of the modules? Like, Career Development, or something?
So I brought this up to my professor, as a suggestion for next year. She said this was a GREAT idea and that I should pilot it for this year.
First I thought- No way, How am I going to have time to throw that together? I can't believe I just volunteered myself for a whole other project.
But, a couple weeks later, time came to present. My assignment this week was to go into this homeless shelter with women aged 20-40. These women are allowed to live in this shelter if they participate in this type of program the shelter has set up. The program teaches them how to get a job, how to clean up their lives, how to take care of their kids, how to control their finances, how to get appropriate housing one day, and so forth. So when creating this whole presentation, I took all that into account.
I realized I only had time to focus on the healthcare field options. I set out to use a couple of resources (thank you Barnes & Noble-My library!) to compose a packet for these women to keep that showed them different nursing type positions, school options, how to pay for school, resume information, etc. While composing this, I realized that the military is also a strong option for many of these women. Well, because I am out-of-my-mind sometimes and have a LOT more courage to do things when its not actually for me, I decided that day that I would go to the nearest Army Recruitment Center and ask for their help.
Low and Behold, I marched right into that Armed Forces Center looking all professional, asked for who ever was in charge (no joke, I really said that), and the army guy went to the back room, past all the push-up and sit up guys, and brought out the big guns (no pun intended). So here are these big important army people (I'm not an expert in army titles) and meek me is asking them for help to donate whatever they could give me that I could give these women. I explained my whole presentation and mission, and prayed that they wouldn't kick me out. When I finally stopped talking, they said that they would love to help! Yay!
I sat down in front of this fancy recruitment screen and waited for them to collect "whatever they could give me". Well, they came out with two huge bags full of tons of different brochures, and about 20 T-Shirts! How kind is that!
On I went, to continue creating the rest of the packet.
Here is what it ended up looking like, In the end:
Health Care Outlook
Please note that Only the "Resume" part is my own work. The Job options, finance and education information is all taken from the reference in the sheet, but put in my own words from the book.
So, overall I was really pleased with this and I was excited to pilot it with these women!
Surprisingly, it went EXTREMELY well! We had their attention immediately. In fact, they actually knew what we would be presenting prior, and the room was actually packed waiting for us. Usually they are making excuses to get out of listening to us talk. So, step one=success.
All of the sudden, I had this wave of confidence come over me. When I know I'm ahead (step one success) I have a lot more confidence to keep going strong. So I kept every ones attention and went through the packet, let them ask questions. They were fascinated. They realized that they could do what I said they could. That it wasn't too late to do something with their lives. That they could still turn around. They could still be somebody. That there were other ways to work around obstacles that have thrown a roadblock in their road before. These women were excited, inspired.
When it was time to leave, they thanked us for all of our "time, diligence and dedication" and even clapped for us. We stayed behind and really helped out a couple individuals that were really interested in our discussion. We even raffled off the T-shirts and they were really super excited about that.
Overall, it was an amazing day. At first, I thought it was going to be awful based on how this group was reported to act prior. But we did it! Even if just one or two women out of the forty people come out of that discussion making a real change in their life, then we made even just an inkling of a difference. We changed someones life. And by doing this, we enabled this to become a module for the future and hopefully future students can feel this way too!
Sorry for the long blog. I was just really excited about this. :-)
Anyway, I've wanted to post this blog since Tuesday, but haven't had the time to dedicate to it, until now.
This semester in our community clinical (last one!) my group has been circling around a couple of different health care (public health) agencies around the local "vulnerable populations" near my school. I live in New Jersey, you can imagine a *couple* different locations I *might* be talking about.
Working in all of these different agencies helping lots of different age groups but primarily young women, I noticed one thing: These young women were interested in health care. Any type of health care. Me. They wanted to know how to get where I was in life. How to work in a hospital. How to take care of patients in any setting. To them, nursing was just this "thing" that they could do that was easy...but it was just a thought and they weren't sure how to even think about doing it.
Our assignment throughout the semester (as a group) was to work with specific modules in order to teach these young women about a new topic every week. Topics range from Child development, to women hygiene, violence, STDs, Sexual health, etc.
So, based on this thought that I had that a LOT of these young women shrugged off our existing topics but were profoundly interested in nursing, I thought-- Why isn't that one of the modules? Like, Career Development, or something?
So I brought this up to my professor, as a suggestion for next year. She said this was a GREAT idea and that I should pilot it for this year.
First I thought- No way, How am I going to have time to throw that together? I can't believe I just volunteered myself for a whole other project.
But, a couple weeks later, time came to present. My assignment this week was to go into this homeless shelter with women aged 20-40. These women are allowed to live in this shelter if they participate in this type of program the shelter has set up. The program teaches them how to get a job, how to clean up their lives, how to take care of their kids, how to control their finances, how to get appropriate housing one day, and so forth. So when creating this whole presentation, I took all that into account.
I realized I only had time to focus on the healthcare field options. I set out to use a couple of resources (thank you Barnes & Noble-My library!) to compose a packet for these women to keep that showed them different nursing type positions, school options, how to pay for school, resume information, etc. While composing this, I realized that the military is also a strong option for many of these women. Well, because I am out-of-my-mind sometimes and have a LOT more courage to do things when its not actually for me, I decided that day that I would go to the nearest Army Recruitment Center and ask for their help.
Low and Behold, I marched right into that Armed Forces Center looking all professional, asked for who ever was in charge (no joke, I really said that), and the army guy went to the back room, past all the push-up and sit up guys, and brought out the big guns (no pun intended). So here are these big important army people (I'm not an expert in army titles) and meek me is asking them for help to donate whatever they could give me that I could give these women. I explained my whole presentation and mission, and prayed that they wouldn't kick me out. When I finally stopped talking, they said that they would love to help! Yay!
I sat down in front of this fancy recruitment screen and waited for them to collect "whatever they could give me". Well, they came out with two huge bags full of tons of different brochures, and about 20 T-Shirts! How kind is that!
On I went, to continue creating the rest of the packet.
Here is what it ended up looking like, In the end:
Health Care Outlook
Please note that Only the "Resume" part is my own work. The Job options, finance and education information is all taken from the reference in the sheet, but put in my own words from the book.
So, overall I was really pleased with this and I was excited to pilot it with these women!
Surprisingly, it went EXTREMELY well! We had their attention immediately. In fact, they actually knew what we would be presenting prior, and the room was actually packed waiting for us. Usually they are making excuses to get out of listening to us talk. So, step one=success.
All of the sudden, I had this wave of confidence come over me. When I know I'm ahead (step one success) I have a lot more confidence to keep going strong. So I kept every ones attention and went through the packet, let them ask questions. They were fascinated. They realized that they could do what I said they could. That it wasn't too late to do something with their lives. That they could still turn around. They could still be somebody. That there were other ways to work around obstacles that have thrown a roadblock in their road before. These women were excited, inspired.
When it was time to leave, they thanked us for all of our "time, diligence and dedication" and even clapped for us. We stayed behind and really helped out a couple individuals that were really interested in our discussion. We even raffled off the T-shirts and they were really super excited about that.
Overall, it was an amazing day. At first, I thought it was going to be awful based on how this group was reported to act prior. But we did it! Even if just one or two women out of the forty people come out of that discussion making a real change in their life, then we made even just an inkling of a difference. We changed someones life. And by doing this, we enabled this to become a module for the future and hopefully future students can feel this way too!
Sorry for the long blog. I was just really excited about this. :-)
Special Thanks to the Army for their donations and special help!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
A Little Off Topic, but...
I have been having the strangest dreams lately. Which is funny and frustrating all at the same time. First of all, my dream interpretation book (in all seriousness! Don't laugh), is at home, and therefore not accessible until Friday. Therefore I can not interpret the dreams I am about to unleash to your innocent minds. But I can try. Second of all, It is also frustrating because I can go for an entire month without having a single dream and then KABAM! I dream every night. Which is good, I like LOVE dreaming, I just hate the inconsistency. And my dreams tend to not kid-around, either. No, they are serious. Well at least in my mind they have extreme significance. Then I share my strange dreams with friends or family and I am usually laughed at or accused of being on drugs...
But I really don't care. Because I can't be responsible for what I dream, it's just what I dream. Whether or not they should be taken seriously....Who knows. But goodness knows, I certainly can't think of *anything* else to write about today.
Two nights ago I had a dream that I was in some sort of house. Someone else's house. Someone else I did not know. I knew in my mind that I was there to save this woman. She was in an abusive relationship, that I knew. I saw her standing outside her bedroom door. Then her abusive (husband? boyfriend?) stood outside of another door, asking her to come in, and she had to choose between the safety of her own bedroom or the room with the man in it. I tried screaming out to her to choose the safe room, to not go with him. But she chose him. They went in the room. They shut the door. Someone locked it. I ran to the door, knocking on it to come back out. I heard screaming inside. Suddenly I was aware of the fact that a lot more people knew about this other than just me, and there were policemen and firemen (I don't know why- she wasn't on fire), waiting outside to save her. But it was up to me, I felt, in the dream. Up to me to get her out. I pried on the door, using anything I could to get the door open despite the lock. I had to save her.
Being that it was two nights ago and my memory is not great, and being the fact that dreams tend to "skip around", I am not entirely sure how I got her out. But I'm pretty sure she came out on her own, but she was badly beaten and could not stand on her own. So (somehow) I picked her up. I can remember her vividly. She was wearing a long white dress and had long red-blondish hair, kind of wavy. Pretty. I felt bad for her. But I had her in my arms (I still don't know how-I'm not strong, but I guess in dreams you can do anything). So I carried her out of the house and suddenly there was this massive pile of rocks, and on the other side of the rocks were the policemen, the rest of the community, etc. They told me to take it easy, to not overwhelm her or scare her by bringing her around too many people after this traumatic experience. So I let her sit down on "my side" of the pile of rocks and somehow pulled a bottle of water out of nowhere to give to her to drink. And then the dream was over....
All of yesterday, I had no clue what any of this meant. But brainstorming now, I realize it is probably an emphasization (new word) on my readiness and anxiety (at the same time) to begin my student public health nursing clinical...I will be visiting people's homes. So you can see how that appeared in the dream, being in a person's house that I do not know. I don't expect to be actually saving someone from an abusive relationship in my real clinical, but I will be there to get them out of other types of problems, health care related. I am nervous to start next week. But, I'm also eager to start after learning a lot more (in lecture) about what community health is, and what it could be....I'm starting to think that maybe I could really like being a public health nurse. But I plan to talk about that in another blog. Perhaps tomorrow.
Anyway, my second dream is freaky and I have no idea where it came from other than stress. As you can infer from my last blog update, I was up late finishing my poster presentation (OH BY THE WAY THAT WENT WELL! Only 3 more times to go!), and I had been working on that in my common area. Well, in my dream, I was still working on my presentation, and suddenly I owned an Ipad (thats beside the point) and the iPad was recording, white noise. Even though you can't technically record white noise while you, a human being, alive, is in the room. Because on playback you'll just hear yourself. But hey, it was a dream, remember? So while recording this white noise, I was somehow convinced that what I was hearing could be nothing but a ghost in the room with me. And I got the eerie feeling that it was not a friendly ghost. I started screaming out "Who's There?" and woke myself up by doing so. Needless to say, when I had to pee in the middle of the night I was very scared. I'm still scared actually. And, my room has been freezing all day today despite my heat at 100%.
*eerie*.
And no I have no idea where that dream came from. Dreams. Sometimes they come out of nowhere.
But seriously....someone comment on this and enlighten me. Does anyone else dream about other people, that they have never met or seen? Is this a common occurence? I have these explicit and detailed dreams about people I've never met but in the dream they mean so much to me. I don't understand it. So does this happen to you? I'd really like to know.
Sorry for the incessant amount of rambling that happened in this post. I was really, really, in a blog-writing post mood and I wracked my brain and this was the only thing I found even remotely interesting totalk write about.
So, thank you for sticking with me and reading. I promise sometime soon I will have a meaningful and profound post. Or maybe a funny one. Or any type of post that is worth reading. Look forward to it....
With Love,
A Dream-Writer in a Nurse's Body
Related Posts:
Ghost!
Readers Beware: This May be A Long Post
Does Anyone Else Do This?
A Nice Message
But I really don't care. Because I can't be responsible for what I dream, it's just what I dream. Whether or not they should be taken seriously....Who knows. But goodness knows, I certainly can't think of *anything* else to write about today.
Two nights ago I had a dream that I was in some sort of house. Someone else's house. Someone else I did not know. I knew in my mind that I was there to save this woman. She was in an abusive relationship, that I knew. I saw her standing outside her bedroom door. Then her abusive (husband? boyfriend?) stood outside of another door, asking her to come in, and she had to choose between the safety of her own bedroom or the room with the man in it. I tried screaming out to her to choose the safe room, to not go with him. But she chose him. They went in the room. They shut the door. Someone locked it. I ran to the door, knocking on it to come back out. I heard screaming inside. Suddenly I was aware of the fact that a lot more people knew about this other than just me, and there were policemen and firemen (I don't know why- she wasn't on fire), waiting outside to save her. But it was up to me, I felt, in the dream. Up to me to get her out. I pried on the door, using anything I could to get the door open despite the lock. I had to save her.
Being that it was two nights ago and my memory is not great, and being the fact that dreams tend to "skip around", I am not entirely sure how I got her out. But I'm pretty sure she came out on her own, but she was badly beaten and could not stand on her own. So (somehow) I picked her up. I can remember her vividly. She was wearing a long white dress and had long red-blondish hair, kind of wavy. Pretty. I felt bad for her. But I had her in my arms (I still don't know how-I'm not strong, but I guess in dreams you can do anything). So I carried her out of the house and suddenly there was this massive pile of rocks, and on the other side of the rocks were the policemen, the rest of the community, etc. They told me to take it easy, to not overwhelm her or scare her by bringing her around too many people after this traumatic experience. So I let her sit down on "my side" of the pile of rocks and somehow pulled a bottle of water out of nowhere to give to her to drink. And then the dream was over....
All of yesterday, I had no clue what any of this meant. But brainstorming now, I realize it is probably an emphasization (new word) on my readiness and anxiety (at the same time) to begin my student public health nursing clinical...I will be visiting people's homes. So you can see how that appeared in the dream, being in a person's house that I do not know. I don't expect to be actually saving someone from an abusive relationship in my real clinical, but I will be there to get them out of other types of problems, health care related. I am nervous to start next week. But, I'm also eager to start after learning a lot more (in lecture) about what community health is, and what it could be....I'm starting to think that maybe I could really like being a public health nurse. But I plan to talk about that in another blog. Perhaps tomorrow.
Anyway, my second dream is freaky and I have no idea where it came from other than stress. As you can infer from my last blog update, I was up late finishing my poster presentation (OH BY THE WAY THAT WENT WELL! Only 3 more times to go!), and I had been working on that in my common area. Well, in my dream, I was still working on my presentation, and suddenly I owned an Ipad (thats beside the point) and the iPad was recording, white noise. Even though you can't technically record white noise while you, a human being, alive, is in the room. Because on playback you'll just hear yourself. But hey, it was a dream, remember? So while recording this white noise, I was somehow convinced that what I was hearing could be nothing but a ghost in the room with me. And I got the eerie feeling that it was not a friendly ghost. I started screaming out "Who's There?" and woke myself up by doing so. Needless to say, when I had to pee in the middle of the night I was very scared. I'm still scared actually. And, my room has been freezing all day today despite my heat at 100%.
*eerie*.
And no I have no idea where that dream came from. Dreams. Sometimes they come out of nowhere.
But seriously....someone comment on this and enlighten me. Does anyone else dream about other people, that they have never met or seen? Is this a common occurence? I have these explicit and detailed dreams about people I've never met but in the dream they mean so much to me. I don't understand it. So does this happen to you? I'd really like to know.
Sorry for the incessant amount of rambling that happened in this post. I was really, really, in a blog-writing post mood and I wracked my brain and this was the only thing I found even remotely interesting to
So, thank you for sticking with me and reading. I promise sometime soon I will have a meaningful and profound post. Or maybe a funny one. Or any type of post that is worth reading. Look forward to it....
With Love,
A Dream-Writer in a Nurse's Body
Related Posts:
Ghost!
Readers Beware: This May be A Long Post
Does Anyone Else Do This?
A Nice Message
Monday, January 24, 2011
I'm a Nursing Major and Never Get to Be Creative OKAY?
Well, I have a major project due tomorrow. In community health, throughout the semester we will be taking our presentations to local shelters and community agencies and education place type things and educating people about our topic. My topic happens to be "Woman's Health and Business"....meaning...educating about our private parts, hygiene, sex, etc. So luckily, since we only had a short amount of time to complete the project, our teacher let us take last year's work and just "fix it up". Well, this is what I got:
At first I was like HEY WOW this is pretty good! So I put it away and didn't look at it until 2 days before it was due. I should include here that we also got "cheat sheetS" to go along with these posters. So when I finally decide I should start working on it (sunday), I start looking at this poster and realize about 80% didn't make sense. The previous unknown person filled up a lot of empty space with pictures and not really useful information.
SO. I'm sitting there. In my chair. 5 feet away from this poster. Staring at it. Thinking. How can I possibly fix this? Where do I start? So I sat there for about 7 more minutes and then I remembered that we were supposed to educate about hygiene throughout the body from head to toe. So I figured I could make some sort of figurine, that could illustrate the entire body and I could do it that way.
Well, I can't do anything half ass. So I took a major trip to Michael's, spent $30 (and that was being conservative), and found what I was gonna do. I decided to buy a whole new poster board and start completely over. *sigh*.
So here is the final finished result:
There was a lot of krazy glue. It got kind of crazy. There was a lot of glueing fingers together.
BUT, I think It turned out pretty OK, Yes? It is a little overwhelming, yes. But that is ok. As long as its fun to look at! It has information on cramps, tampons, pads, sex and cleanliness, hair care, lice or dandruff, mouth care, nail care, gyno care, feet care, pretty pictures, how to shave, how to put on makeup the right way, how to tell if you have a UTI or a yeast infection....its pretty good stuff! I'm pretty happy with it.
~WNB
Related Posts:
Community Health Knowledge
SO. I'm sitting there. In my chair. 5 feet away from this poster. Staring at it. Thinking. How can I possibly fix this? Where do I start? So I sat there for about 7 more minutes and then I remembered that we were supposed to educate about hygiene throughout the body from head to toe. So I figured I could make some sort of figurine, that could illustrate the entire body and I could do it that way.
Well, I can't do anything half ass. So I took a major trip to Michael's, spent $30 (and that was being conservative), and found what I was gonna do. I decided to buy a whole new poster board and start completely over. *sigh*.
 |
| The beginning stages. Organized Chaos. And my laptop there, allowing me to watch Modern Family from my common area. Yay for long internet cables!! |
BUT, I think It turned out pretty OK, Yes? It is a little overwhelming, yes. But that is ok. As long as its fun to look at! It has information on cramps, tampons, pads, sex and cleanliness, hair care, lice or dandruff, mouth care, nail care, gyno care, feet care, pretty pictures, how to shave, how to put on makeup the right way, how to tell if you have a UTI or a yeast infection....its pretty good stuff! I'm pretty happy with it.
~WNB
Related Posts:
Community Health Knowledge
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