Final Analysis

In the year of two thousand and twelve I started my nursing school career at Bon Secours
Memorial College of Nursing. I was not the person that knew exactly what I wanted to be
when I graduated from high-school or when I was growing up. The one thing that
remained constant was I was a social person that thrived off of interaction with others and
I loved caring for others and helping them when they were in need. Eventually, my
passion for nursing evolved after caring for children after years of being a nanny, caring
for the elderly and working with special needs children (all in previous careers). I
realized that making a difference in peoples lives and caring for others was something
that I wanted to do everyday in my career, but I also wanted to do something that would
challenge me constantly and allow me to grow and learn. After finishing up working on a
liberal arts degree at a nearby community college, I made the plunge and applied to
nursing school, was accepted and began what would become the most challenging thing I
had ever done and never looked back. I still feel that in the beginning of nursing of the
program at Bon Secours, I had no idea what to expect and what it fully meant to be a
nurse. I also do not think (despite a lot of prior warnings) that I fully comprehended the
level of difficulty and challenges that I was going to be dealing with on a daily basis.
Little did I also know how much I was going to change through this time and this
challenging process. I can still recall my first ever clinicals with my colleagues where we
practiced bed baths and brushing patients teeth. This still is a memory that I look back on
and chuckle to myself. We didnt know very much yet but we were so eager to learn and
absorb all the information we could. In the clinical setting we provided basic human
needs and practiced communication with patients and collaboration with the nurses. I

remember feeling so proud of myself after making it through a day of clinical and
attempting to answer patients questions and just make it through the day. Somewhere in
the transition from Competencies I to Competencies II, I think that I started feeling more
comfortable being in the clinical setting and I also started to realize that information that I
was learning in the classroom was now something I was really retaining and being able to
connect the dots and relate back to my practice. The next step in my nursing school
career was more than likely one of my biggest challenges that I ever met. I began taking a
full course load that included Pathopharmacology and ANS I. All of a sudden the first
light bulb went off that this was where all of those previous warnings about how
challenging things would be were coming from. I began to learn more about time
management and balancing multiple tasks at once and what a commitment this program
would actually be. I ended up having a very devastating semester when I did not pass
ANS I by a very close final grade and felt very defeated. Once again, little did I know
that this was going to be one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. This
taught me to pick myself back up when I was unsuccessful, how to seek out support and
help the following time around and it also allowed for me to truly grasp material on a
level that I had not before and build so much more of a solid base than I ever would have
had it been that I barely passed the first time. After passing and successfully completing
ANS I, I then began to feel that this was going to be attainable. I had picked myself back
up and gained new understanding and knowledge seeing that I was beginning to then
understand what was actually going on with my patients and was really able to apply
material from the classroom to the clinical setting. In my ANS II semester I started seeing
all different areas of nursing and now that I had a better understanding of things I was

able to apply my knowledge to all types of patients in many different settings. I had gone
to all of the Bon Secours hospitals in the area at this time and had been on various units
and also went to out of the hospital experiences that included shadowing in the VCU ER
and with a school nurse at a nearby high school. I feel that spending time on all of the
different units in the different hospitals allowed for me to have time to not only gain
knowledge in different areas in nursing but it also allowed time for me to work on skills
on different unit as well. Foley catheter insertions, lab draws, IV insertions and medicine
administration were all things that I gained great experience with in the program. When
May 2014 rolled around I also began working in the ICU at Saint Marys hospital and this
was a place that I feel that I gained some of the best experience that I had. This was a
time that allowed for me to become comfortable in the hospital and also learn from the
phenomenal nurses on my unit. I also feel that this refined my communication skills with
patients and people within the interporfessional team. After completing my last semester
that included Pediatrics and other specialized courses, I then started my final semester of
nursing school in August 2015. This semester has been the end of quite a long and
challenging journey. After completing 225 hours in my clinical immersion, I have truly
seen the changes that one of our professors described as the light bulb going off or the
switch or transition from thinking like a student to thinking like a nurse. I still feel
certain that I have a lot to learn and a lot of growing in my nursing career to come but I
am eager to start my first RN career in the Emergency Room at Memorial Regional
Medical Center (which also happens to be where I did my over 200 immersion clinical
hours) and grow and learn as a new graduate nurse. While in immersion, I noticed my
increased confidence in the skills such as lab draws and IV insertion all the way to

making critical thinking decisions and providing general patient care. It is a great feeling
to have your patients and their family members look to you for answers and give you
their full trust in their care and it is an even better feeling when I began feeling much
more comfortable answering their questions and providing their care on my own. I realize
that I have a lot more growing to do and that I will always strive to learn more and
always work towards providing better care for my patients, as well as becoming a more
skilled nurse. I am excited to start this new journey with my new graduate RN career in
January. Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing has helped mold me into the person
and new nurse that I am today. I hope to apply the knowledge and skills that I have
gained into my new career and feel that I will be well prepared to pursue future plans
with continuing education in the future as well as working in the hospital setting.