{"id":735,"date":"2015-08-27T06:16:45","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T06:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/?p=735"},"modified":"2015-10-08T16:12:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T16:12:22","slug":"katies-student-nursing-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/2015\/08\/27\/katies-student-nursing-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie’s Student Nursing Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday 2nd September (8pm-9pm\u00a0UK time) @EBNursingBMJ <\/a>is co-hosting a twitter chat on student nursing and midwifery with @RCNStudents\u00a0 <\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

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To celebrate the contributions our student nurses\/midwives make\u00a0\u2013 we are sharing blogs of their experiences in practice.\u00a0 Today\u2019s blog is from Katie Eckert<\/a>, a\u00a0third year student nurse\u00a0from the University of Derby<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Katie<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Before I started nursing I was a security officer who occasionally completed an Open University course to keep me busy. Matt, my husband, always told me \u201cyou would make a good nurse\u201d and I would laugh the statement off. Don\u2019t tell him but little did I know a couple of years on I would be following his advice and be about to commence my third year of studying. Although I had done Health Care Assistant work for a year before starting my course I still had no idea what to expect. University was very much the same as the Open University course apart from the fact that I actually went to a University for lectures. In the first year we learnt a lot of the \u201cbasics\u201d in nursing around clinical skill and the government bodies that we needed to be aware of etc.\u00a0\u00a0 Until our first placements were announced I hadn\u2019t really given it much thought. I had been allocated a local district nursing team for my first year which both excited me and scared me. So my first day came and with my uniform perfectly pressed and shoes polished I found myself ushered into a small office in a clinic full of nurses in royal blue. I sat in the corner and watched trying to take as much as I could in so I could impress my new mentor. When the office cleared we focused on my paperwork that I needed to get signed off. This included an interview to identify goals. Then she said \u201cWhy do you want to be a nurse?\u201d Now I had prepared answers for the obvious questions like, \u201cWhere do you live?\u201d \u201cHave you any children?\u201d \u201cWhat year of study are you in?\u201d but this totally threw me. I couldn\u2019t sit there and say \u201cBecause my husband thought I might be good at it\u201d so I quickly responded with \u201cI want to help people\u201d. To this day I haven\u2019t got a clue if she believed me or not as she simply carried on with the paperwork. The truth was, of course I wanted to help people, but at the same time I really wasn\u2019t sure. I never dreamed I would get onto the nursing course so when I did it was a bit of a whirlwind and I hadn\u2019t sat back and thought about how I felt about it all.<\/p>\n

During my second year I have continued to develop my clinical skills and learn a lot more about myself and how I manage situations on a busy Emergency Management Unit in a local trust. I am sure you can appreciate the new fear I felt when I learnt that this would be my second placement, what a jump from district nursing to emergency nursing. During this year I have faced many challenges, from the increasing difficulty of University work, to the higher expectations of my clinical skills as a second year student nurse. However, it has not put me off progressing into third year. If anything I have a huge desire to see where third year takes me.<\/p>\n

If my first year mentor was to ask me the same question again now that I have completed 2 years of study, with the experiences I now have, I wouldn\u2019t give the same answer. Of course I want to help people – but I have learnt that being a nurse is much more than that. I want to fulfil my desire to learn so as I can help positively change people\u2019s lives. I want to develop as an individual and challenge myself on a daily basis. Now in my third year of nursing I am realising that Nursing is more than a career choice \u2013 it\u2019s a way of life for me and my husband<\/em>, who I have to say has been very supportive. This journey is far from over and I am thoroughly enjoying the challenges it is throwing at me and can\u2019t wait to see where the journey will take me once I finish my degree next year.<\/p>\n

Katie Eckert StN @KatieEckertStN<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday 2nd September (8pm-9pm\u00a0UK time) @EBNursingBMJ is co-hosting a twitter chat on student nursing and midwifery with @RCNStudents\u00a0   To celebrate the contributions our student nurses\/midwives make\u00a0\u2013 we are sharing blogs of their experiences in practice.\u00a0 Today\u2019s blog is from Katie Eckert, a\u00a0third year student nurse\u00a0from the University of Derby Before I started nursing […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3606,3656],"tags":[3613,3672],"class_list":["post-735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ebn-journal-chat-ebnjc","category-student-nursingmidwifery","tag-ebnjc","tag-midwifery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/files\/2015\/08\/Katie-STDN.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/ebn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}