Reflection: Take Not the Road Less Traveled By Dominic J. Buensalido, RN – MMBM I can still remember, when I was small, my parents taught me how to put on my clothes and shoes, how to tie shoelaces and how to brush my teeth. They teach us how things should be done and introduce the concept of making right choices. This is normal occurrence in our formative years where we follow and imitate that we learn from our model persons. We learn how to conform to the standards set by people and our society. As we grow older, we discover new things and ideas.
The found out that there are other choices and better ways in doing the things that we used to do. There are easier approach of putting on our clothes on and a safer way in crossing the streets. With this simple illustration, we begin to think…which one should be? Which path should I take? In our society, we are bombarded with standards and norms that we are ought to follow. It’s up to us which one to choose, or rather, create our own choice. It is always a cliche to we should take the road less travelled because it is where success is tasteful.
But what about creating new roads instead? The speech of Mikaela Irene Fudolig “ Take Not the Road Less Travelled” reminds us to broaden our horizons and explore more possibilities. It’s a little bit scary, but travelling roads that are not yet taken and explored is more exciting. I will share my life’s journey in the path I chose to tread. When I was young, I never envisioned myself to be a nurse. But life is full of surprises, a lot of twists and turns, detours, ultimately, I became a nurse. Gradually, I learned to love and like my profession.
As a young professional, I wanted to have the best and latest clinical skills training. I mostly had my clinical experience in tertiary hospitals in the city as what most nurses were doing. I was then a conformist. I never entertained thoughts of working outside clinical settings. Things began to change when one of my superiors in the nursing service informed me that there is a vacant position in the Newborn Screening Center Visayas. I had heard so much about the center, their programs, their vision, their work. I even attended some of their symposiums when I was in college.
Unfortunately, it did not create too much interest for me at first. In our quest for gainful employment, my friend and I applied for the vacant nurse position at the NSCV. At first it was just for fun. We are volunteer nurses at that time at the WVSU MC, so technically we are jobless. It was also a big adjustment for us since we were employed before. With that, we thought that maybe we can try at least our luck in the center. We pursued our application and underwent training. I took a while for us to adjust because most of the task and procedures were new to us.
We tried our best to learn, cope and meet the standards of this job. But more surprises are coming. We were so lucky that both of us were hired after the training but I was assigned for another job. I was designated as the Project Development Officer. This is the same level as the nurse but with different scope. And I started to think, Is this really for me? Is this the path that I should take? This position was open for 5 years and it is the first time that somebody took the challenged and YES, I accepted it.
Indeed, it aroused my Ariesian qualities: competitive, self-critical, ambitious and aggressive. I had my many first in this work: new job title, new job description, new scope of responsibilities. Before I was just following standards and now I am preparing protocols and standards for others to comply. It allowed me to use both of my knowledge in nursing, health sciences, and management to become a competent healthcare provider, a social catalyst, and a dynamic leader to help people with their healthcare needs and achieve equity in health.
It was really a totally different world that what I dreamed before but it was however a most rewarding experience. This new path made me realize that there are other avenues for us nurses to practice our profession. It signifies that we are not only restricted in the hospital, engrossed with our curative skills, taking care of critical patient. Most of us may experience ambivalence but as we learn to love our work, we also learn to move on and be productive in our chosen career.
