While watching the movie NURSES I’m feeling excited, emotional, happy, and ready to start my career as a nurse and be the advocate, friend, supporter, and most importantly caretaker of my patients. This movie has me reflecting on the skills the nurses exemplify and what skills I still need to develop in myself. I think one of the most important skills that I can always improve on is communication. It’s sometimes hard to find the right response and I believe that this skill is critical to have because this can really solidify a bond and trusting connection between a patient and their nurse. A skill that stuck with me from the start of the video was tailoring care to each patient population. I loved watching one of the nurses working with the pediatric population and how he adapted his nursing style for the comfort of the children he takes care of. I believe that makes the most difference in patient care because he is making the patient feel a sense of relatedness and comfort in how he takes care of them. I’m leaning more towards pediatrics for my future, and I can’t wait to follow this skill and type of care for this population. Something I will take from my coursework thus far is this career is hard and it is a commitment, but it’s the commitment, hard work, and passion for people that make it so worth it.

A patient population that I have not taken care of is the Native American Population. Caring for this population can bring some barriers to care such as the isolated locations that they live in. Sometimes it takes nurses hours to reach them on dirt roads. This brings up the barrier of accessibility and assistance if needed in a quick amount of time, because they’re in remote areas that accessibility and assistance isn’t there. The practice of cultural humility helped the nurses caring for this diverse population by having them establish a relatedness and needs of the patients. They needed to understand why this population lived the way they did and accept that to then be able to take care of them. Since caring for diverse populations and creating equity is so important, it’s important for me to continue to learn this type of skill because as a nurse it’s important to be able to care for each population to the best of my ability. I always have room for more knowledge, nursing is a career for continuous learning and expanding knowledge.

As I reflect on the guest speakers and recorded Career Services presentation there are a few things I took away to best prepare myself in my future job search, interview process, and ways to be successful. To set myself apart from other applicants in the interview process I will focus on the organization’s goals and advocate for myself. I will highlight how I align with their goals and the mission of their organization. I will also tell them what my career goals are now and where I see myself in the next five years. Being confident in where I see myself in the next five years with the organization will set me apart. Something else that will set me apart from other applicants will be to ask the interviewer questions. A question mentioned in the Nursing Interview Presentation to ask your interviewer is, “What challenges can I expect in this position.” I think this question can really put the interviewer on their toes and it’s important to stand out during an interview. Another important set of questions to ask especially as a new grad can be, “How will I know if I am progressing well? Will you provide me with monthly check ins or what is the feedback process for new graduates? What is the onboarding process? These questions are so important to ask. I can describe my strengths and support my strengths with my background from the UNE Nursing Program and what I applied throughout my schooling. Some of the strengths I can highlight are team building qualities from group work, team collaboration, and communication I learned from clinical, SIM, lab, and in the classroom. Highlighting weaknesses isn’t always the best thing to do. I think changing the topic to a challenge that I faced and using the STAR technique highlighted in the presentation will switch the narrative and help me stand out. There are so many strategies to prepare for an interview and I will take a lot from the recorded presentations provided to me.