In all my years of nursing, I have worked in the medical-surgical area, cardiac catheter and interventional radiology departments, adult and pediatric ICUs, and outpatient clinics. I became a nurse in response to a personal experience I had in my early 20s, and it has shaped my entire nursing career.

I was married with two small sons and one night, I received a call, the call that no one ever wants to receive. My husband had been in an automobile crash and had been flown to the hospital. He was in surgery by the time I arrived and subsequently taken to the ICU. This was back when visiting hours were 15 minutes every 4 hours and immediate family only. He had so many machines and wires that I was very overwhelmed. I now know that he had increased intracranial pressure and had developed diabetes insipidus. At the time, I was not told anything.

He was in ICU for a week, and the one time that anyone spoke to me was concerning a question that I asked. On the seventh day, I was in the room for a visit when a doctor came into the room and proceeded to clip the stitches that were holding his eyes closed. He then rubbed a cotton ball on my husband’s eyes. My husband did not react, and the doctor rushed out of the room, yelling orders at the nurses. They descended upon the room, quickly unhooked things, and ran from the room. Not one person spoke to me to let me know what was happening.

I went back to the waiting room and sat down. When the time for the next visiting hours came, I was asked to wait until someone came to get me. I was then escorted into a private waiting room, alone for 3 hours with no further contact. I called my family, who arrived to sit with me, and they were there when a nurse finally came in to talk with me. She was not in scrubs but was dressed professionally. She introduced herself and told me that her title was transplant coordinator. It was she who informed me that my husband had been declared brain dead, and she wanted to talk to me about donating his organs.

After the shock wore off and the funeral was over, I thought back to the treatment that I received throughout that week and decided to become a nurse so that I could advocate for the families of my patients in the hopes that I could prevent that fear and uncertainty from affecting them.

I have seen many things change, from restricted visiting hours to sharing patient treatment plans. Now, we allow visitors at most hours of the night, and the patients and their families are very involved in their treatment. While I have not been involved in the leadership portion of those changes, I have always accepted them and incorporated them into my nursing practice as what was best for my patients.

Now, I want to be part of the team leading the change and motivate the nurses I work with to help them accept change. I want to be a leader who knows what it is like to provide patient care and can use that knowledge to guide new staff. My goal is to become a unit's nurse manager and eventually the hospital's chief nursing officer.