Nursing is a profession of caring. As a nurse respect for human dignity is one of the core values I strive to maintain throughout my career. Advocacy is the consequence of that respect and requires that as a nurse, I am accorded the ability to understand healthcare from the patient’s perspective and range of socio-cultural factors that influence their decisions. I have acquired the knowledge to assess how each individual interacts with and relate to others, families, and communities within a constantly changing society. As a nurse and agent for change, it is my responsibility to analyze how their environment can positively or negatively affect health and research means that will promote the modification of stressors and develop alternative resources that can be made available to the individual. As a nurse on the forefront of my career, I hope to continue to evolve and assist our future nurses to be adaptable to those changes.
My name is Melinda Kelly, and I would like to share with you information about myself and my career goals. I currently reside in El Paso, Texas which borders New Mexico and the country of Mexico. I also reside in Scotland seasonally from June through August of each year. I came to the Southwest from Natchez which is a small town in Mississippi, because the opportunities available in my chosen profession of nursing were limited. My mother who was the charge nurse at a local convalescent home gave me my first nursing opportunity in the eleventh grade when she hired me on as a Nurse’s Aide in training. My mother is my role model. Every day of her working career, she displayed love, compassion and empathy towards her patients. The nurses under her tutelage were a source of information and never made others feel as if they were an inconvenience.