Registered Nurse

I'm an oncology nurse and my favorite thing about being an oncology nurse is definitely the patients. You would think that some of these patients would be the saddest and hopeless patients but these patients are just so full of hope and love and kindness and I think a lot of times when people are in such vulnerable positions they really reach out and and just try to bring joy to everybody around them and that is my favorite aspect of nursing is just feeling the good and positive outlooks and hope that that my patients have.

By far my most favorite thing about being a nurse is the interactions I have with the patients. And in my particular line of work, I'm not a hands-on nurse doing bedside nursing. I do a lot of education and so I'll go into a nursing facility or a hospital and I'll provide education to patients about acute rehabilitation and what it is and what it requires. And I get to educate families too about our acute rehab program and what it's all about. So I just love educating the patients, getting to know the patients. That's definitely my favorite aspect of nursing.

My favorite aspects about being a nurse are for sure the many different opportunities there are. We all have different personalities and so there's different things that interest us. There's hospital nursing, there's obviously you know doctor's office nursing, but then there's other travel nursing. You go to different places and perform jobs there or what I'm doing now. I'm a vaccine specialist and talk to people about traveling to other countries. So definitely favorite aspect is so many different venues for being a nurse. Whether it's actually doing patient care or maybe on the phone doing some tele telehealth. So great great opportunities.

My favorite aspect of being a nurse where I currently work is getting to know my patients. I work on a, it's a subacute rehab unit and so our patients are typically there for a couple of weeks to a couple months to a couple of years, some of them, and so it's really cool to get to know them and their families and their stories and just develop a relationship with them where it's like I'm not just going to work and seeing patients but I'm going to work and I'm seeing my friends and it's cool to see them progress and be able to help them in that way.

So I've been a nurse for 38 years, 37 years. My favorite part about being a nurse, and I love being a nurse, is that there's a lot of different choices in nursing on your specialty and a lot of different choices for scheduling. And so if you need an afternoon job because of daycare, which is what I needed at first, that was available. There were shifts like that. But the best part of it is being with people when they're sometimes at their worst or they're most vulnerable. The privilege of sharing those moments with them and helping them through that is really my favorite aspect of being a nurse.