The health professional that I interviewed was Shakia Lynch. She has been a registered nurse for eight years and she works as a floor nurse at an intermediate care hospital. Shakia’s inspiration getting into the health field was her family, specifically her younger sister, who had lung issues. She started her career after getting her associates degree at Tidewater Community College and started working in a nursing home. At some point she did attempt to do ICU, but it wasn’t for her. At her job she is a floor nurse, and her job is to make sure patients are getting better, identify if they aren’t getting better so that you can help them before it gets worse, and to stabilize the patient. One of her favorite things about her job is getting to see how appreciative the patients can be. One of the most surprising things about her job was that they tended to be short staffed. This was kinda hard for her to get into as she liked having the opportunity to bond/grow a relationship with her patients and with the staff shortage it was kinda hard to do that. While she states that staff shortages are a surprising, the challenging thing for her was time management. Her work environment tends to be very friendly and that everyone helps around. Another thing that she states is that you need to be able to stand up for yourself when you need help because sometimes other staff members can be very busy. Shakia’s advice to someone getting into the work field is be able to speak up for yourself and to also be able to speak up for your patient.

I really did enjoy talking with Shakia about what path set her up to become a registered nurse. One thing that I really took away from this is not only being able to stand up for yourself, but to stand up for the patients as well. The reason for this being, is because a patient might not have the best support system. Another thing that I took away from this is that going to work wasn’t an everyday thing and that it could sometimes be for 3 days out of the week, but with really long hours.