
Claudia Lee
Nurse
UCI HEALTH
Irvine, CA USA
“I've dealt with discouragement by understanding who I am and what I stand for.”
UCI HEALTH
Irvine, CA USA
“I've dealt with discouragement by understanding who I am and what I stand for.”
Nurse
I am a registered nurse at UCI Health in the Emergency Room Department.
I assess, treat, carry out, and manage orders for patients experiencing medical emergencies. After I have completed a thorough head to toe assessment of a patient, I draw labs, perform electrocardiograms, monitor vital signs, and administer medications. Once labs are back, the patient's care team with reassessing and treat accordingly. The patient either gets admitted, goes to surgery, or goes home. As a nurse, you are constantly managing every aspect of care and are constantly monitoring them.
Here's the first step for everyone
Look for volunteer opportunities at your local hospital. This is where I truly got to see how the entire patient care team played a vital part in the patient's stay at the hospital. There are SO many avenues that you can take, nursing is not the only career you could choose from: registration staff, occupational therapists, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, pharmacy, the list goes on. Also, if nursing is for you, study hard, and commit to the process, and it's worth it.
"The noise I heard was that nursing could be difficult and competitive, and my family didn't have a history with healthcare workers, so it was unfamiliar to me. "
"Find what you love, find your niche because there are many departments, so many paths you can take, there are so many things you can do."
When I was in college, my future expectation was very different from how it is currently. As I grew up and as my life started to change, so did my passions, You shouldn't set rules and limits on how you think the future will be.
"I think just being in this position. I graduated from nursing school about 3 years ago, and I got a job in my dream department, the Emergency Department. So once I was able to achieve my bachelor's degree, I started at UCI, which I wanted."
Around the time I had graduated high school, I interned for 15 months, 4 hours a week, rotating through departments, and getting experience. I always knew I wanted to be in healthcare and here I learned that nursing was for me.
If you know that’s what you want, then there are so many avenues nowadays to get into nursing, and it doesn’t have to be completely linear... You have to keep trying. If you know that’s what you want, do it because it’ll be worth it.
Student at CSUF