Goal #1: Use professional behaviors and balance school with work. This can be done by:
Contacting/communicating with supervisors and professors.
Use an organized calendar.
Be punctual
Progress: I have done well. Both work and school typically take up the hours of 8 am to 5 pm each weekday and I believe that sense of routine has worked in my ability to be productive with my time and plan ahead when exams and assignments are coming up.
Goal #2: Build relationships and confront challenges within the healthcare field. This can be done by:
Face-to-face interactions with patients.
Learn from other coworkers to show professionalism.
Practice and become comfortable with various hospital tools.
Progress: Not only have I been able to break out of my shell a little bit and am slowly building confidence, I also am becoming more familiar with the various tools on my unit in the hospital.
Goal #3: Analyze, synthesize, and evaluate situations on a team and individually.
Conflict resolution and being comfortable asking questions.
Relate knowledge from the classroom to the internship, such as obtaining vitals.
Observe relationships between CRC nursing staff.
Progress: This goal has been the hardest. I am getting better at asking questions as I have become more comfortable with my coworkers and I have been using knowledge from the classroom, such as taking vital signs, hand hygiene, and how to interact with patients. However, the critical thinking aspect comes into play when the nursing staff are preoccupied with a task and I must think to myself what the best option to do is. At first I was always nervous as I didn't want to make the wrong decision, however now that I have learned what tasks are more important in my unit than others, I have been able to learn to think for myself.
My current career goals are that after graduation I hope to become and Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Nurse. After a couple years in that field, I hope to return to school and earn my Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree in Nurse Anesthesia. I have these goals because the place where I discovered I wanted to become a nurse was while I shadowed an ICU nurse when I was in high school. In recent years, I have done research and Nurse Anesthesia seems to be one of the best and most competitive Nursing graduate programs, so I may plan to apply for that in the future as well. I am very sure of wanting to become a nurse in the future as I am a current Nursing major, however the plans after I graduate may change as time goes on. To find out if these goals fit my strengths or preferences, I plan to shadow varying nursing professions as well as find nurses online who share their experiences as nurses and listen to their advice.
Now having been at this internship for a full semester, there has been slight changes in my pre-LHSI goals. While the main goal of becoming a DNP in Nurse Anesthesia is still a goal of mine, I have also looked into other DNP programs, such as becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner, Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, and Clinical Nurse Midwife. I started discovering more while in Nursing school as I have had the ability to talk to my peers and their goals as well as my professors and their specialities. Another new career goal of mine might be becoming a Nurse Educator. Again, as I have been able to talk to my professors, I thought to myself how maybe I would want to be a professor some day. Most of them have a minimum of a Master's of Science in Nursing, which means if I receive a DNP, this is another possibility. In conclusion, since full time for Nurses include working 3 days a week, I try not to limit myself in what career path I may take as the future has unlimited possibilities.
In order to work towards my big career goal, I plan to continue working at this site by getting hired outside of LHSI as well as looking for an additional hospital job to start during the summer at Eskenazi hospital. I will also look into what additional classes I need to be taking for graduate school in the future and for my minor to make sure those get completed in an appropriate time. Lastly, by this time next year, I plan to be looking and applying for summer nursing externships. Many hospitals around the country look for nursing students entering their senior year to hire on for the summer and I believe this is the closest I will get to as working as a real nurse before becoming one. I may also plan to be starting to study for the NCLEX (registered nurse licensure exam) next summer in order to take it as soon as I graduate in 2025.
Being at this internship, I have gained a lot of knowledge and information about my future career. As majority of my work is done with the nurses, and I am currently in nursing school, I have learned a lot by listening to their stories and their own career journeys. My current plans have not changed, but rather have caused an even deeper passion for nursing inside of me. In any field, especially nursing, I feel that you are always learning, so I definitely have become more confident in my career-related decisions. However, as any nurse should be, I am flexible in what my future may look like and I understand that it might change.