“I am a nurse. I made it. I really just made it!”. Shortly after getting my nursing license, I spent hours submitting my resume to dialysis companies. The persistence paid off, and my journey as a hemodialysis (HD) nurse soon began. Many times, floor nurses ask, “Why are you a dialysis nurse? Isn’t it like retirement job”, “Isn’t it boring?”, or “Don’t you want to get yourself involved in something else before this?”. Contrary to what others believe, it has been a fulfilling career. After each treatment, I go home knowing that I made a difference in a patient’s life, one treatment at a time. See, in nursing, there is no settling and no ‘retirement job’. Whether someone may think highly, or not-so-highly, about hemodialysis nursing, my heart still swells with pride each time I complete a treatment and save another life. …show more content…
Her love for HD nursing is where the I found the notion to also venture into this specialty. Like she did, I wanted to fall in love with my job and career. Sure enough, when my training began as an HD nurse, the concept of a machine superseding the vast functions of our kidneys was fascinating. The physical routine of setting up machines and cannulating patients came to me swiftly, and I passed my final HD nursing test with a 97 percent. After working as a chronic HD nurse for approximately one year, the acute side of HD piqued my interest. Soon, I transitioned into acute care and fell into a deeper love with hemodialysis. Unlike the monotonous treatments in chronic HD, acute dialysis involved higher levels of critical thinking, judgment, assessment, competency, being able to identify impending cardiopulmonary incidences, and correlating lab results to patient conditions. In acute care, my career roles soon advanced into preceptor and rotating charge