Professional Nursing Goals, Admission Essay Example

Please consider this admission essay towards my acceptance into your prestigious nursing school as a BSN student. My professional goals are to work in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). I welcome the opportunity to improve a patient’s life whether in a fleeting moment or during the times the patient is recovering in the ICU unit. Many nurses have informed me, the ICU can take a personal toll on a nurse because not every patient may survive while others are blessed with life. However, I do not see ICU as a place full of illness and pain.  I see it as a place that I can make someone is last moments the best or make their recovery as relaxed as possible.  This leads to my personal nursing goal to spend my nursing career giving every patient quality care, my personal time, and my personal commitment to ensure their visit is one of compassionate care.

I intend to apply myself diligently to my studies because I am passionate about education. The more I learn about nursing during my years of medical studies, the more equipped I will be to help my patients. This is one the reasons for choosing the nursing profession.  I want to go to work every day knowing that I can help somebody who could be going through the worst day of his or her life.  I want to be able to hold patients hands and assure them that everything is going to be all right, even when it is not going to be.

At my tender of 50, I believe my years of professional experience combined with the BSN curriculum will provide me the perfect foundation to becoming a nurse while venturing into the nursing educational career path. The entry into the nursing industry should be an easy transition with the must documented future nursing shortages.  According to National Academy of Sciences (2008),” Our most conservative estimates say that by 2020 we will be short about 340,000 nurses. The Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks that the number will be 1.4 million” (pg.22).  One of my professional goals is to be among the many potential nurses that can help fill the void of the future nursing shortages.

Personal Definition of Nursing

My definition of nursing is to educate people about a healthy lifestyle that can reduce the number and seriousness of preventative illnesses and accidents. However, when people become ill regardless of the reason, diagnosis, or anticipated prognosis—a nurse must give the best possible care, comfort, and protection.  Variables such as the patients, race, SES, and religion must not affect the nursing care a patient receives.  Nursing care is not always provided in a state-of-the-art hospital:  It may take place in a remote nursing station, in a private home, a prison, or in a third-world country where there would be a definite lack of our modern day medical technology.  A good nurse remains positive under these conditions so as not to worry her patients and improvises as much as possible.  An easy work situation is a rarity for nurses.  Therefore, they should be prepared to work hard and smart.  A nurse must be committed to her profession, whatever that may require at any given time.

Concept of Career Opportunities in the Nursing Field

There are an overwhelming number of opportunities in the nursing field.  Depending upon the size of the hospital, one can find staff nurses, nurses in charge of a ward, nurses with specialties such as ICU nurses, operating room nurses, recovery room nurses, geriatric nurses, pediatric nurses, oncology nurses, orthopedic nurses, director of nurses, nurse practitioners, and others.  The higher positions, obviously, require more education.  I believe that once I have more-than-satisfactorily completed my BSN and performed well as a nurse, if I wanted to advance to my goal of an ICU nurse and facilitator of patient post op care, I would, in due course, be given any required specialty education and subsequent placements. On the other hand, I may, eventually, wish to obtain my MSN or NP.  Again, I believe that if I have performed well in all areas of my responsibilities, including ethical behaviour with patients and their families as well as working within the line of authority as delineated in the organizational chart, I could count on my hospital to give me the necessary opportunity and support.

The opportunities that exist for nurses are almost without limits.  Nurses can work in nursing stations in remote communities and on reserves.  In these places, their scope of nursing duties is usually greater than it would be in a city, and so is their pay.  In some cases, nurses can live in these locations, while in other cases they just travel (usually by plane) in for a couple of days.  Nurses can also work for the Red Cross in the USA and Canada as well as in third-world countries where the work is varied and the scope of duties greatly increased. Nurses are also employed in doctors’ offices; in industry; in various public health functions; and in education, the latter being an area into which it is currently my goal to enter when I am around 50 years of age.  Here there also exist various venues.  I could go into teaching nursing at universities here or abroad.  I cannot think of another career that offers the many opportunities that nursing does.