Sample Nursing Personal Statement
Ever since I was a child, when my mother and I looked after my father who suffered from Multiple Sclerosis, I have known that nursing is as much about caring for the mind and spirit of the patient as about caring for the body. Although this knowledge stayed with me, it was only when I began to volunteer at Age Concern, where I organised social events for the elderly and offered them my companionship, that my love of caring was rekindled and I decided that I wish to become a professional adult nurse. I want to study Adult Nursing to gain the requisite technical knowledge so that I may soon become a specialist nurse within an intensive care unit or a scrub nurse, working with skilled surgeons.
To prepare myself for the rigorous academic courses of Adult Nursing, I am taking an Access in Medical Bioscience course at college, while to gain practical experience of nursing, I am volunteering at Charing Cross Hospital. To help ensure I have the personal qualities required of a nurse, I completed an NVQ Level 2 in Health and Social Care at Care UK, where I worked as a care assistant for two years. In which role, I cared for elderly people on a daily basis, seeing to their needs and monitoring and reporting on their conditions to nurses and paramedics. I worked closely with medical professionals, learning how they work and being inspired by their commitment and tireless work while also learning how to be attentive to the needs of patients. This experience will stand me in good stead when I come to the practical part of the degree within a hospital, something I particularly look forward to as it will allow me to put all the theory I have learned in the classroom into practice.
Outside of the classroom, I keep myself up-to-date with developments in nursing through reading weekly the Nursing Times. Reading informs me about the various areas of nursing I shall study in the degree and impresses upon me that with an aging population nurses are more in need than ever before.
Before deciding on nursing, I trained as an accountant and although accountancy is as far away from nursing as it is possible to imagine, I am sure my head for figures and ability to organise and understand large quantities of data will be of use as a nurse, since the role often requires you to calculate and accurately measure out the required amount of medicine for patients.
After training as an accountant I worked for some years as a retail store manager in various major high-street fashion chains, such as Levi’s Jeans, in my native Brazil as well as in the UK. I was responsible for supervising the shop floor, keeping track of store inventory and ensuring customer service was exceptional at all times. From this work, I developed excellent organisational skills and the ability to ensure people’s needs and demands are met, all of which are qualities of a good nurse.
At present, I juggle two jobs with my studies. I work as a babysitter in the evenings and as a customer service assistant within the giant Top Shop retail store on Oxford Street, during the weekends. This juggling act requires incredibly hard work and very effective time management so it is excellent preparation for the demanding and unusual working hours of professional nursing. Despite my packed weekly schedule, I still manage to sandwich in time for cycling, swimming and jogging. At university I should like to join the cycling and swimming clubs with which I should like to help organise sports trips abroad.
I love to travel far and wide and have travelled much in my life picking up a number of European languages along the way, including Italian and German. I hope at university to mix with people from many more different cultures and nations so that, as well as providing me with the academic qualifications necessary to fulfil my ambition of becoming a nurse working in a leading hospital, university may make even more of a cosmopolitan out of me.
We hope this sample Nursing personal statement has been helpful.