I wanted to be a nurse for as long as I can remember. I started volunteering at a local hospital as soon as I was old enough and when college application time care around I was certain that nursing school was where I wanted to be. After a 4 year program and with my BSN under my belt, I began working as an RN in the medical intensive care unit of a university hospital.

After a few years, I decided to return to school and further my education. While I remember considering a critical care nurse practitioner program, I ultimately decided to study women’s health. It took me about 4 years to get my Master’s Degree – working weekends while attending classes and clinicals during the week. Caring for women (mostly healthy and many pregnant!) in an outpatient setting was a very different experience than caring for critically ill patients in the hospital.

The next stop in my career was as a clinical editor. I just happened to see an ad for a position in a local nursing publication, and although I wasn’t entirely sure what “clinical editor” even meant, I decided to apply for the job and find out. What a change I was in for! I was in an office setting and wearing real clothes. I spent my first 6 months in a film studio helping to produce nursing videos. If anyone had ever said that as a nurse, I could someday be writing scripts on ECGs and I.V. insertion, recruiting talent, and spending time in an edit suite, I never would have believed them!

Of course, there were bumps in this road…financing my education, reality shock, planning and managing personal and family responsibilities, just to name a few. I’ll have to save those for another post! Well – that’s my story, what’s yours?