Personal Ways of Knowing - Essay Example

Indeed, these early experiences almost certainly shaped and directed my interests towards a career in healthcare. In college, I took my first steps towards becoming a health care professional when I started a 4 year Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing. In my opinion the role of the nurse is not just performing set tasks to alleviate a clinical condition but rather to take a holistic approach and treating the individual as a whole and not just as a clinical case! With holistic care not only is the clinical condition treated but the patients’ general well-being and satisfaction is also optimized.

As a nurse therefore all my efforts are directed toward helping and supporting the patient to recover and become capable of taking care of his/ her needs. Patient’s safety is, of course, a vital part of optimal care whereby critical thinking should be utilized to avoid any errors or mistakes in delivering care as well as solving any other work related problems. Indeed, being a nurse involves much more than performing technical tasks. It requires a personal and professional commitment for effective delivery of goals and objectives.

After I graduated and completed a one year internship I started my journey in nursing by working in King Faisal specialist hospital as RN in neuroscience ward for one year. As I was eager to learn new skills and gain more knowledge, I enrolled in one year Diploma in Critical Care accredited by Saudi council. The diploma equipped with necessary skills and knowledge to work successfully in the ICU for almost two years, providing care for critically ill patients. During this period I was occasionally assigned to teach the new staff and nursing students as a preceptorship.

I enjoyed this teaching experience, finding myself capable to facilitate and pass on knowledge to others as well as having the ability to explain things to my students clearly. This was also a crucial period when I realized that acquisition of knowledge is an ongoing process and needs to be adopted within the work culture. I realized that I like to teach and decided to move to academic field. I strongly believed that I have the potential to become an exceptional teacher. At the end of 2008, I was accepted to work as teaching assistant at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Nursing College (KSAU).

I was responsible to facilitate the new knowledge, skills, and practice to the nursing students during their clinical day. Also, I was helping them in applying theory to practice. As a teacher, I understood the importance of ‘knowing’ and the process by which the personal knowledge accrued is used within the profession to improve and improvise the outcome. Porter (2010) emphasizes that evidence based practice greatly facilitates in decision making process in the care of individual patients.

I support the view because individual patient’s needs are unique while the treatment could be similar to others. While working in KSAU, I was awarded a full scholarship to study abroad to help broaden the knowledge of academic and clinical nursing by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I took the challenge that this opportunity had offered mainly because I am dedicated, motivated, and ambitious to continue my higher education. Mantzorou and Mastrogiannis (2011) assert that knowing the patients is vital ingredient of effective nursing practice that thrives on clinical learning, development of cognitive, intuitive and experiential and personal knowledge