We recently had an entry from Jodi, a nursing student at Nova Southeastern University. She wanted to share her thoughts on nursing and going through nursing school!  We hope you enjoy her post!  If you have any comments or advice for Jodi or other nursing students like her, please feel free to leave a comment :).

Guest Blog Post from Jodi

Critical thinking-aka second nature for health care professionals.  Critical thinking goes hand in hand with all experiences throughout the workday, making its way into every decision and conversation.  But I challenge any healthcare worker to think back to the days when they were novice students, like myself.  Yes, those days filled with noisy lecture halls, expensive textbooks, stern professors, and difficult exams!  Myself, just beginning to slowly learn the “ropes of the trade,” never expected the concept of critical thinking to be so challenging for us new students.

Quickly my peers and I realized that this would be the key to developing into the successful nurses we all are striving to become. So we put away our theories of memorization and cram sessions we had used up until this point, now gearing to truly understand concepts and yes, how to critically think in situations. The importance of this has only been reinstituted time after time once we arrived to our first semester of clinicals. Here we observed that nothing in life is straight from a textbook (but wouldn’t that be so much easier!) Our poor clinical professor had to hear too frequently a variation of the following: “But professor, I don’t know what to do, that patient didn’t respond like the textbook said!” This is where the nurses come in- the very people we as nursing students look up to, admire, and are anxious to follow in the steps of. My biggest lessons and greatest knowledge has thus far come from observing the nurses in the hospital settings. I appreciate every moment the nurses have given to us students, after all, it must take A LOT of patience to deal with us sometimes! Seeing these nurses’ creativity, patience, ability to multi-task, and compassion has only reignited a fire within my soul to continue pursuing my career with this very passion. Amidst their busy days they have demonstrated to us students what can never be explained in a classroom or book.

~ Jodi

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