My long-term goal is to become the best nurse I can become in the hospital setting. I am particularly interested in medical-surgical nursing roles. As part of that process, I would like to move into a Nurse Manager or possibly a Nurse Clinician type of role. My work experience is going to be very helpful in that regard. I work with an excellent role model for Nurse Manager, and there is a Nurse Clinician on my ward also who is very highly respected. By observing both these role models, my understanding of what those positions involve is really strengthened.

I also believe my courses are really helpful in this ambition. Two courses in particular are ones I have learned a lot from—one on leadership in nursing, and another on how nursing is impacted by the changes in the healthcare system. Those are really important issues for me, because I see nurses stepping up to provide more and more responsibility for healthcare for patients. And the changes in how healthcare is provided here in the U.S. make it really important to understand how to provide the best possible care to patients in an environment that is changing significantly.

I have developed three key objectives I would like to accomplish in this course.

1. At the end of this course, I will be able to accurately define the roles of CNO, Quality Management, and the administrative departments of the facility where I work. I believe that understanding will be important for me to better understand the career path in my organization.
2. At the end of this course I will be able to accurately describe how Quality Management does its function. At this time, I really don’t have a good grasp on how they go about checking on QM functions and how they determine when interventions are needed. I hope to better understand their role as a result of this course.
3. At the end of this course, I will be able to describe how the facility’s administrative functions interact with the medical staff to provide necessary support, supplies, etc. for the various units in the facility. At the moment, those things appear to happen through somewhat arcane processes that I don’t fully understand. I am hoping that by talking with both the CNO for my unit and with the administrators that I will gain a better idea of how those non-medical departments support the nursing and medical staff.