Understanding My Why

I would have to say that I am uniquely me because I am an overthinker and analyzer, but because of this I am always the one with questions! My friends always say that I’m the one who thinks of the craziest, most outside the box type of question. It could just be that I believe I’m personable and approachable. I like to talk and feel I can get to know people fairly easily by just getting to know them and their lives because I can just keep going with my questions!

Past Me:

Upon reflecting on my career and how my life has morphed over the years I am beginning to understand why certain career paths didn’t work out for me and why others have. My first few jobs were in retail, in fact my first degree was in Textile & Apparel Management and Marketing. This landed me in retail management roles where I found myself not fitting in with the cutthroat need to upsell socks and jeans as add on items to the t-shirt my customers were coming in for. Coming out of high school I never considered becoming a nurse because my mom and many of my Filipino relatives were nurses as well. I hate to admit that I didn’t want to follow in their footsteps because to me, it felt like I was "just settling". Fast forward to my mid-20’s I met my now husband who was an active duty Marine at the time. I wanted to spend more time with him so figured I should just quit the retail life and go back to school. Through nursing school I found myself second guessing the whole thing. I didn’t find the passion in bed side nursing and I feared I would be wasting thousands of dollars again, similar to how I felt I wasted my parents money with my “fashion” degree. I finally ended up in my psychiatric clinical rotation and finally felt that spark I had been looking for. It felt natural and almost easy to bring my already calm demeanor to situations where my patients just needed someone to hear them and TALK to them! My whole life I found it easy to just talk and ask questions, and NOW I was finally able to make a career out of it! Jump to nine years later and I am now in my current role as the Team Training/Patient Safety Nurse. Reflecting back, it’s pretty amazing to get to use my overthinking and analyzing part of me to deep dive into our patient safety events, but to also tie in that Team Training aspect of motivating and developing our employees through TALKING! Just as Michel Jr. shared the clip of how ‘knowing your why’ could make a difference in how you sing a tune, it started to click in my brain and heart that nursing could really tie in to who I am both personally and professionally! Your passion shines through when you really understand your "why" for "what" you're doing (Habeeb, 2015). 

                                  

Current Me:

  

I really enjoy making a difference in peoples’ lives. It may no longer be at the bedside of my mental health patients, but now with the various employees throughout my organization. I love seeing their enthusiasm and light sparkle in their eyes when an improvement idea sounds like it’ll work and make a difference in their patients lives! The last few days have been rough with classes starting up again and work tasks getting overwhelming, but then I remember that the RCA we just chartered ended up in a patient death, but our team was going to work hard to ensure that the next patient would have a lesser likelihood of the exact same fate.

Steve Jobs shared a quote at a Stanford 2005 Commencement Ceremony alluding to living life everyday as if it was your last. He said he looked in the mirror everyday and asked himself if he would be okay with what he had lined up for the day had today been his last. If he was unhappy with hearing “No” for too many days in a row, he knew he had to change something (Jobs, 2011). That really resonated with me because of course not everyday would be to it’s fullest potential, but too many days of monotony would be terrible!

Future Me:

As I start my leadership class, I look forward to homing in on my role as an influential leader at my facility. I am not a supervisor, so my role does not have any authority behind it, but I manage three programs that require staff across varying levels to participate and complete tasks. According to (Nursing Administration: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition by American Nurses Association (2016-11-09), n.d.-b) there are standards for varying levels of influence. It goes on to describe how nursing administrators are responsible for ensuring that a process of mistake and error mitigations is not seen as a single personnel problem, but rather a system process that has room for improvement. I’d like to be able to translate my influence by demonstrating the importance of ownership and accountability in these improvement efforts (Nursing Administration: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition by American Nurses Association (2016-11-09), n.d.-b). I know this is a big struggle in my program, but I hope to tie in my love of questions and talking as a way to understand the resistance and develop the desire to change and improve.

 

Habeeb, S. (2015, September 10). Michael Jr: Know Your Why [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZe5y2D60YU&feature=youtu.be

Jobs, S. (2011, October 6). How to live before you die [Video]. TED Talks. Retrieved January 11, 2023, from https://www.ted.com/talks/steve_jobs_how_to_live_before_you_die?utm_campaign=tedspread

Nursing Administration: Scope and Standards of Practice, 2nd Edition by American Nurses Association (2016-11-09) (2nd ed.). (n.d.-b). American Nurses Association.