About Me
I am a 2nd year undergraduate student at IUPUI majoring in nursing and minoring in health psychology. I chose this major because I wanted a career that would challenge my critical-thinking skills, and I hope to make a difference in improving the overall patient-care experience.
IUSON
Teamwork
As a team member, I like to be reliable and willing to help those that I work with. One of my strengths as a team member is to keep open communication so that work can be done more efficiently. I also like to keep a positive attitude because I feel that it helps keep a good rapport with the people that I work with.
My Experiences and Skills
My work experiences have mostly been restaurants/food service and customer service. The skills that I have gained from my work experiences are customer service, problem-solving, critical-thinking, and communication. I enjoy customer service, as well as problem-solving and critical-thinking. I love to be around the public as well as challenge myself with difficult tasks. I do not enjoy having to practice my communication skills too much because I find that one to be the most difficult to improve. Although, I am always eager to gain more skills, whether I find them difficult or not.
Teamwork Development
At the internship site, I made an effort to make any contibutions to the team as necessary. At the beginning of the internship, I provided extra help to others who might be busy. Some examples of this are auditing lists for the administrative side and assisting/gathering supplies for protocols on the unit. As I near the end of the internship, I contribute as a team member in more independent ways. While I still auit lists and assist with protocols, I also perform a select few protocols on my own and complile data for the administrative side. My role as a team member has changed from being an assistant to independantly contributing to the team's work.
Being in nursing school, my role as a professional is to learn skills and practice them in school, healthcare, and other work enviroments. I try to incorporate skills that I have learned into these aspects of my life because it is my responsibility to be familiar with them as I become a nurse. This year has proved to make major changes to my professional development because of nursing school and this internship. I have had the opportunity to practice the humanities and teachnical aspects to being a nurse. I can now take what I have learned to further improve on my role as a professional.
Experiences and Skills Development
My previous skills and experiences have been gained from working in the restaurant industry. Because of my classes and my internship, I have tweaked these skills to be geared towards the nursing profession. While critical-thinking in general was a strength at the beginning of my sophmore year, nursing-related critical-thinking is a skill that I need to work on. This year I have recognized that I need to be able to adjust my skills to be directed towards the nursing profession. A new strength that I have developed is making apllications to new situations. I have done much better at identifying previously understood information and applying them to new situations, in areas such as school or daily life. In addition, this new strength will be beneficial in working to improve my nursing-related critical-thinking skills.
I currently work as a host/togo specialist at Hacienda Mexican Restaurant and usually hold the responsibility of opening or closing. Working at a restaurant during a pandemic and staffing shortage has resulted to me working by myself most of the time. I have shifted to being able to handle a large workload without feeling overwhelmed. Because of the staffing shortage, I have learned the importance of managing time and assistance. At times when I am not busy I provide assistance to whoever is in need of it, whether it be hosts, servers, bussers, or kitchen staff. Understanding how to manage with staffing shortages will help me prepare for going into a Heathfield where there is also currently a staffing shortage. The teamwork provided at Hacienda has also improved my work-life balance strategies to prevent burnout.
At Olive Garden, I gained experience working in almost all areas of the restaurant, including host, togo specialist, server, busser, and kitchen preparation. By learning the expected tasks in all these areas, I understood the workload of my coworkers. I also worked as a front-of-the-house helper for a time. For this job I was to assist anyone who needed help, such as running food, refilling drinks, restocking, cleaning, etc.. It was important for me to get in the flow of having a good rapport with my coworkers so that we could work as a team efficiently. By dividing my time while helping with different jobs, I developed a fast-paced workflow in which I can handle balancing multiple tasks at once.
My first job at Macs Market introduced me to the culture of working in customer service. There, I interacted with the public by taking orders and by working at the register. I was taught how to handle a certain level of responsibility by cooking food while keeping in mind infection control, handling and counting money, counting inventory, and training new employees. While training new employees, I had to adapt to their learning style to make sure they were able to learn new tasks so they could join the team without difficulty. Teamwork was one of the most important aspects of the job because all employees were expected to help where help was needed most. When doing this I was always paying attention to my coworkers workload to make sure they were not overwhelmed.
I spent one year volunteering and working my clinical hours to receive my CNA license at Waterford Place. While working here, I was able to learn the responsibilities of a CNA and nurse by practicing the skills I had to learn and by working with a team of nurses and CNA's. Observing an interprofessional team coordinate tasks gave me a better understanding of how work is distributed based on level of expertise, current workload or staffing, strengths and weaknesses, etc.. Being able to work alongside professionals in the career that I want to go in gave me insight to the innerworkings of healthcare and what is expected of nurses.