YouAlberta
YouAlberta is written by students for students.
Nina is in her fourth and final year of the bilingual nursing program. Throughout her degree, she has enjoyed participating in intramurals and singing in a choir. Following graduation, you can find Nina working in a trauma surgery unit at the UofA hospital.
Looking back to my high school self, I realize just how little I knew about the nursing profession or even what a nursing education would look like.
The last four years have gone by in the blink of an eye, and it is unbelievable to think of how much I have learned and perfected throughout my degree. Things that seemed scary and insurmountable in year one have become second nature through over 1,300 hours of clinical placements.
Taking advantage of job opportunities available to nursing students also contributed immensely to my becoming comfortable in a clinical setting. Working as a health care aide and an undergraduate nurse employee helped me develop confidence in my skills and made my school placements feel less intimidating. From these experiences, I knew I wanted to challenge myself even more during my preceptorship. This is a nursing student's final practicum in a specialized clinical area with the goal of preparing them to work as a graduate nurse through 350 hours of work with an RN currently working in that area. When I heard that a rural or out-of-province placement was an option, I was immediately interested. More specifically, I set my mind on going east to Ottawa, where I would have the unique opportunity of doing my last clinical placement in a Francophone hospital.
Going to Hôpital Montfort in Ottawa ended up being an amazing experience. I was placed in a cardiology medicine unit with telemetry. This was a whole new area for me, and I loved learning more about the heart and being able to try new skills. Additionally, I lived in a new place completely on my own for the first time and was able to explore Ottawa's many museums and parks on my days off. Lastly, I was able to fully immerse myself in a French clinical environment and a true bilingual city, which allowed me to gain confidence in my language skills.
Being in the bilingual program, the importance of serving populations living in a minority official language setting was always highlighted primarily through the concept of active offer. This means that bilingual providers have the duty to offer services in French at the first encounter with any patient without being asked. It always felt difficult for me to imagine putting this into practice in Alberta because I felt that it was so rare that a patient did not speak any English. I realize now that the point isn't if they are able to understand or speak English but rather if there is another language they feel more comfortable in. Since getting back from my preceptorship, I have changed the way I approach patients and make sure to ask if they speak any other languages. Through doing this, I have been able to speak Portuguese (my first language) and French with patients right here in Edmonton.
I am incredibly happy with my choice to go to Ottawa because the way I see it is once I graduate, I will most likely never be in a situation where I can just leave for a new city for a few months. While the nursing portion of what I learned was useful and successfully prepared me to become an independent and skilled graduate nurse, the environment in which I did it forced me to grow in many other ways.
To conclude, if I could tell other students one thing, it would be to do things that scare you or are out of your comfort zone because, as cheesy as it sounds, that is when you will learn the most. Seek out experiences that will not only result in academic growth but also personal growth. I would encourage other nursing students to see preceptorship as an opportunity to have a new experience and take advantage of the flexibility you still have by not being licensed in a specific place. As scary as it may seem, you are capable of more than you think.