Nursing is a profession that requires highly qualified individuals. Ideally, to achieve the qualifications, a lot of training must be implemented to ensure that individuals are eligible in performing healthcare services. Trainees should be well prepared to adapt to the dynamic nursing environment and achieve high competency levels. Practitioner experience facilitates and assists the trainees in going through the transition periods, which begins from being the junior nursing students to become professionals and independently registered nurses (Jeffs, Saragosa, Law, Kuluski, Espin, Parker & Collins, 2018). This essay aim at discussing nursing internship, volunteer opportunities and certifications in areas of emergency medicine and pediatrics.
Nursing internship
Clinical experiences or nursing internships aim at applying the nursing theories, research practice and knowledge to the real nursing tasks in the medical settings (Coyne, Kennedy, Self & Bullock, 2018). In this perspective, many internship programs are offered to the new graduated registered nurses who have at most one-year acute care experience. Nursing internship help students to be prepared to work in a diverse patient-care environment in a variety of settings. Additionally, practitioner experience is essential in providing a vast wealth of knowledge to the students to become well-equipped before entering any nursing professional world.
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Emergency medicine internship position
In this nursing field, the interns are expected to implement the already learned knowledge into the real world scenario. As an intern in the emergency medicine program, I have learned how to deal with patients who are in serious and life-threatening disorders or injuries. ER deal with the patients of all age groups and gender, who have a full spectrum of undifferentiated physical illnesses. During the internship program in ER, one gains advanced knowledge in handling patients who have lost consciousness due to severe injuries on the head or as a result of food and drug poisoning (Ting, Abu-Laban, Morrison, Ducharme & Lang, 2018). In most cases, the patients experience severe bleeding and the critical part of the brain is badly damaged due to the development of trauma or other disorders. The nature of the work in ER field is complicated because the nurses and the physicians must ensure that they have the necessary experience to provide quality services to the patients with cardiac arrest as well as breathing difficulties. The most essential interventions that help in boosting the patients’ recovery in ER include defibrillation, which entails applying an electric shock to the patients’ hearts to get the heart to function normally again. Tracheostomy is another intervention that is essential in ER as it assists in opening the windpipe from the front of the neck to the patients’ lungs to allow oxygen supply. Another vital procedure is endotracheal intubation that involves inserting a tube via the mouth or nose into the windpipe to help the oxygen in reaching the patients’ lungs. Consequently, this internship program is linked to my degree field as it aims at maximizing the patients’ chances of survival and ensuring their recovery.
Pediatric internship position
Pediatric entails medical diagnostics and treatments of children who are below 18 years old. The children are taken care as they transition from birth through adolescence. The risks that these patients experience are assessed and effective interventions are applied in supervising the health of the children to protect them from acquiring chronic illnesses as they mature. One of the major ideas that interns in this program should note when assessing the risks for the children’s health is that most of the conditions that affect children are avoidable. The pediatric care aims at promoting and preventing diseases. Other goals of pediatric focus on decreasing children mortality, reducing disability and morbidity, and promoting the optimum growth of the children. Moreover, the pediatricians have the objective of assisting the children in achieving longer and more fruitful lives. As an intern in this program, I tend to have a unique role and involvement in the children’s’ lives. Regularly scheduled children visits are set up where the health, development, growth, well-being, nutrition, and safety are discussed. Screening procedures are also conducted to evaluate the children’s health status.
Volunteer opportunities
Volunteering in different nursing services is helpful to others and yield essential personal and professional benefits. Also, volunteer services in healthcare help individuals to learn new skills by being exposed to new experiences, become more marketable, making an effective clinical judgment and advance the health of other people just like in the internship sessions (Ibrahim & Aly, 2018) . Volunteer opportunities in nursing vary from the skills that are expected and the appropriate time commitment.
Volunteering in National Student Nurse Association
Notably, the National Student Nurse Association is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to assisting the underserved population who are in need of medical volunteers. The organization works closely with the American Red Cross, which play a fundamental role in assisting the less privileged people. However, not all individuals who wait to volunteer are qualified for the available services. A technique such as Volunteer-Match must be applied to recruit highly qualified individuals. The volunteers are matched with the vulnerable population in whom they are committed to serving.
Volunteering in nursing databases
Healthcare database systems are important in storing patients’ medical information. All health organizations must have a health keeping database to assist in monitoring the patients’ progress as they acquire treatment services (Lyerla, Durbin, & Henderson, 2018). As a volunteer in this sector, working in a healthcare database would help in assessing the health of the patients and the patterns of their illnesses. Identifying the unmet regional healthcare needs becomes easy and monitoring of the documentation patterns of health care expenditure become simple. A volunteer can acquire the skills of systematically arranging patients' data and managing information.
Certification
One nursing certification that would help me in advancing my nursing career is the one on the certified pediatric nurse. Idyllically, this certification offers specific care to pediatric patients. The qualifications for this certification include the ability to perform assessments, evaluation of medication and treatment interventions. Moreover, one needs to have adequate knowledge on child development and the major development milestones children undergo before they are mature. Finally, one needs to know the key pathologic diseases that often attack children.
Description of the experience
According to the nursing practitioner experiences that I have had, I am capable of identifying educational and career option that I am best suited. I can realize my values, interests, potential, preferences, and skills to my career path. I can establish a relationship with children via my effective communication skills and ability to pay attention to their details. Additionally, I am flexible to work at any time. Other strengths include having stable emotions and I can solve children-related challenges no matter how complex the situation is. Thus, I can consider doing a nursing career in the pediatric sector.
Conclusion
Students are expected to participate in different volunteer work and internship to apply the knowledge gained in class in real life experience. Through taking part in volunteer work and internship, they acquire relevant skills that make them more marketable. Identifying one's potential, interests and preferences in a career path also assist a student to make a good choice of the course that would best suit him or her. Thus, students should know their potential and work towards achieving their dream career.
Reference
Coyne, B. M., Kennedy, C., Self, A., & Bullock, L. (2018). A Comprehensive Approach to Undergraduate Nursing Students' Research Experiences. Journal of Nursing Education , 57 (1), 58-62.
Ibrahim, A. F., & Aly, A. A. (2018). Clinical judgment among nursing interns. Clinical Nursing Studies , 6 (3), 19.
Jeffs, L., Saragosa, M., Law, M., Kuluski, K., Espin, S., Parker, H., & Collins, K. (2018). The varying roles of nurses during interfacility care transitions. Journal of nursing care quality , 33 (1), E1-E6.
Lyerla, F., Durbin, C. R., & Henderson, R. (2018). Development of a Nursing Electronic Medical Record Usability Protocol. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing , 36 (8), 393-397.
Ting, D. K., Abu-Laban, R. B., Morrison, L., Ducharme, J., & Lang, E. S. (2018). LO12: Implementation of an editorial internship at the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine to foster education and participation in academic emergency medicine. Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine , 20 (S1), S10-S11.
