Mish Mash Mentor

I just talked with one of the women my friends recommended as a good resource for helping to puzzle out my future. Indeed, she gave me lots to think about. Here’s an outline of my options:

a) Do I want to provide health care to patients, or not?
1) If not, then what do I want to do and how do I get experience in that?
i) Can I get experience in that without more clinical experience?
2) If yes, in what capacity, and how do I get experience in that?
i) Registered nurse
a) In-patient labor & delivery or antepartum; OB/GYN office
ii) Nurse practitioner
a) In-patient antepartum; OB/GYN office; prison; community clinic

Frankly, providing health care terrifies me; so much could go wrong! But on the other hand, most of it goes right and it’s satisfying to help someone meet her health care goals.

Even if I listen to the part of me that thinks that clinical practice is terrifying, I could still meet my goals in nursing – to ensure women have access to reproductive health care services – through advocacy or education. Granted, jobs in either of those specialties might require clinical experience.

If I choose to continue on with clinical practice, then I need to decide in what setting I want to practice and in what capacity. Questions that arise here include: do I need experience as a registered nurse in order to be an effective nurse practitioner? Do I need in-patient experience, or would out-patient be sufficient? If I choose this option, I need more experience in general, and specifically before trying to take those skills to the developing world (again); the United States is probably the best place for me to get that experience.

Some of these are questions I’ve struggled with since nursing school. And who knows if I made the right decision when I went to Colorado instead of starting on the traditional trajectory of a nursing school student by getting a nursing assistant job that summer. But, as I was just telling my friend Kathy, though it’s difficult to keep in mind, I like to think that everything happens for a reason. At this point, I’m waiting for that reason to become apparent in the form of a job offer!