From an early stage in my life I knew I wanted to enter the nursing profession, and I owe a major part of this decision and my passion for nursing to my grandmother. From the stories of her accomplishments and hardships that she endured during her nursing career, it enabled her to become a strong and resilient woman. As a result, I knew that I wanted to follow in her footsteps.

During my time studying for my Bachelors of Nursing at Robert Morris University, I was able to take part in a life changing experience. This experience took place when I traveled to Managua, Nicaragua with a nursing group from Robert Morris University to work with families in the barrio and open clinics around Managua to provide health care for the people. I believe this is when I realized that my choice of entering the nursing field was the right path for me. I found a career that was more than just a career but one that would provide me a lifetime of fulfillment.

Once graduating from Robert Morris University, I decided to move to Columbus, Ohio to begin working as a bedside nurse. I began my first nursing assignment on the medical-surgical unit at Grady Memorial Hospital (GMH), which is part of the Ohio Health System. My career projection was that I would be there for about a year and then move on to fulfill my dream of working in an intensive care unit. However, I stayed in this initial position for three years because I realized that I needed to expand my knowledge by being cross-trained for the intermediate and intensive care unit at GMH. After my three years were completed and I obtained the knowledge I was seeking, there became an opportunity for a new challenge in my career. This led me to accept a position at Riverside Methodist Hospital in the Neuro Critical Care (NCC) unit. Neuro had always been a passion of mine because I find the brain interesting and complex, so I knew this was the right move for me at this time. After spending two years working at NCC, I found myself wanting to expand my bedside knowledge and experience critical care nursing. This led me to work at Grant Medical Center (GMC) in the intensive care unit. Although it took five years to get into an intensive care unit, it did fulfil one of my nursing goals which was to work in a Level 1 trauma center. I knew from the training that I received over the years that I was ready for this intense position. GMC taught me how to be successful in nursing and provided the life skills necessary to meet future challenges, which I am forever grateful. During the covid-19 pandemic, I decided to work with patients experiencing covid-19, which led me to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio for the last six months. Throughout my nursing career, each different hospital assignment enabled me to grow both professionally and personally in my life.

Looking back over my career as a Registered Nurse (RN), my desire to join the leadership ranks began with my manager at GMH. The leadership style that this individual portrayed impacted me in a positive way. As a new graduate RN, I believe that working on this individual’s unit, was the best for my nursing career and personal growth. The environment and culture that was created was one of investing in their staff, genuinely caring about the staff’s well-being and promoting a safe learning environment while staying true to the core values of the nursing profession. During one of my quarterly check-ins with this manager I was asked, “Where do you see your nursing career moving towards?” At that moment, I knew I wanted to be a manager and provide other RNs the same experience that this manager showed me. This led me to further my education in nursing to pursue a leadership role. Being able to have this conversation with full transparency, and truly knowing I had the support of this individual, I believe is what led me to starting my Masters of Science in Nursing with a concentration in Administration at Capital University.

As a further pursuit of my goals, I found myself becoming a member of GMH nursing congress. Working with individuals from all nursing units of the hospital allowed me to observe leadership from another perspective. This nursing congress role allowed me to understand the interworking’s of how each department collaborated and worked together to obtain the results needed for success by all the departments of the hospital. Not only was I able to join the nursing congress, but I also was appointed to lead the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) initiative with a fellow co-worker. This role provided me the experience of developing a project from the beginning to the end. We developed the KPIs that we were going to measure for the unit, determined the KPI goals, and how to encourage staff involvement and excitement to perform better than our established KPI goals. Navigating through the different areas of the project taught me lessons on leadership. One major area that I learned is how individuals respond to certain leadership styles, and how to enable breakthroughs with the staff to increase engagement based on their personality types.

Once I started a new RN position at RMH on the NCC unit, I applied to Neuro Practice Council (NPC). I knew the leadership growth that I gained during my time at GMH was valuable and wanted to continue my leadership training. Joining NPC provided me the opportunity to join the research committee within this council. While on this committee, I worked with other co-workers to revise and update multiple policies for the unit and the hospital based on the most recent evidence. Besides working on policies, we seized on the research of potentially implementing a new process for labs to be drawn by staff instead of lab technicians. Between the research that was obtained and listening to the staff concerns during the four months of research, we determined this was not the time to implement this change within the unit. I believe this taught me a vital lesson about leadership and the importance of listening to the individuals doing the work because when staff are overwhelmed, adding another task to their job can result in the staff feeling defeated and decrease their morale. As a result, we decided to implement the change at a later date. The staff voiced their gratitude for holding off on this change and said they would be excited to try the change after all current changes were implemented. We had made the right decision for the unit based on the feedback from the staff, which justified the importance of listening to your staff. Next, I joined nursing congress at RMH which provided me the opportunity to experience the collaboration between units on a grander scale than my previous nursing congress experience. Lastly, the biggest project I was a part of during my time at NCC was the creation of “Talk to me Thursday”. This was created because three of my coworkers and I found a need to decrease the number of emails coming from management and create a better platform for communication to occur so some information would not be missed. Working in this group, with the staff and management, allowed us to identify and find a resolution to the problem of communication between the staff and management.

After my time at RMH, I transferred to GMC and during my time there, I continued my leadership growth by being a person that spoke up for others, and worked with management on several issues. I also starting precepting and found this to be a strong basis to start implementing the leadership style I want to practice when I enter management.