A Personal Statement Sample
This personal statement is written in support of my application for admission to study mental nursing. At present I am working as a Healthcare Assistant for the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust (KMPT), which is one of the country’s preeminent providers of comprehensive inpatient and outpatient mental health services. Through my employer, there are funds available to assist me in achieving my goal of becoming a nurse specializing in mental nursing. Given my educational and professional background and passion for this facet of healthcare, I believe I am a very well aligned candidate for admission into this programme of study.
To me, mental nursing represents an incredibly important part of the healthcare continuum and as such I envision myself dedicated to such practice for the long term. As I am currently employed in this field, albeit as a healthcare assistant. I already have a unique perspective on the mental nursing dynamic, and why it is so very important. In the longer term, I aspire to continue my career working for KMPT, within this specialized discipline of mental nursing, because it focuses upon the promotion of health, as opposed to strictly looking at disease orientation.
Mental nursing is a critical component of holistic mental health treatment and care, because it fosters self-help and independence in patients and is geared towards facilitating independent living situations for them. This particular discipline strongly resonates with me, because I also have intense respect for the personal values and desires of my individual patients. From my past experience in the healthcare industry and my current engagement with KMPT, I am fully aware of how immensely satisfying it would be, professionally, to deliver the gift of competent and safe care to patients under a full range of mental and/or psychiatric conditions. It is the forward looking and thinking core philosophy of health maintenance that draws me to study in the field of mental nursing, and if fortunate enough to be admitted into the mental nursing programme, shall remain committed to making this discipline a cornerstone of my medical career.
As a seasoned healthcare professional, I am confident that everything I have accomplished and have experienced, professionally, educationally, and personally, has uniquely prepared me for study and a subsequent career in mental nursing. My formidable track record in the pharmaceutical industry is a perfect example of my attention to detail, collaborative skills, and ability to succeed in a high pressure, highly competitive, and ever-changing work environment. Through such experiences, I have been able to hone some of the most critical skills for mental nursing, including without limitation, high-level analytics, problem solving, identifying and triaging issues, and exhibiting outstanding communication skills as both a leader and a strategist. I have also become very adept with the computer skills needed in the healthcare management arena, for reporting, patient tracking, and standard business communications. I am comfortable working in a team, but am also fully able to self-motivate, and to work very effectively on my own. Because of my own internal initiative and drive, I am very adept at seeing tasks through from conception to implementation.
The above-described initiative, creativity, and ability to communicate, are critical factors for success in mental nursing. Given the inherent presence of mental illness within the patient population, these skills are crucial, where the mental nurse is charged with promoting and supporting recovery efforts. Inspiring and challenging individuals to take better control over their existing or present conditions, requires determination, focus, and a will to effectuate change.
My education and professional choices clearly demonstrate how I have gravitated towards this, my chose career path. My studies and early work are reflective of my highly technical background, having worked in both tech-related and analytical areas such as pharmacy, blood laboratory, and sterile services, and having obtained degrees and certifications in pharmaceutical technology and the hard sciences. These achievements required precision analytics, detail orientation, and the ability to learn and apply very complex theories.
My work in the blood laboratory and in the hospital sterile services realm left little to no margin for error, as this work was and is governed by strict quality standards including ISO-9002, among others. I have thrived in such professional capacities, and am readily able to demonstrate the requisite attention to details and specifications, which are skills that are clearly be transferable into the patient care and mental nursing realm.
Sales and pharmaceutical assistant work have also uniquely prepared me for customer service oriented endeavors, which mental nursing clearly includes. I possess excellent computer skills and am adept at learning and using workplace systems for a variety of purposes, including resource distribution, logistics, and customer service management. In my present capacity as a healthcare assistant for KMPT, I have found all of the foregoing to be extremely beneficial in my work with patients. My career has steadily been migrating towards my ultimate mental nursing goal, and this latest work assignment with a clinical patient population, accesses all of the skills, knowledge, and abilities obtained through my earlier educational and professional experiences. Seguing further into patient care is a natural progression for me, both skill and interest-wise.
Of all the transferable skills noted herein, including without limitation, quality control, laboratory sciences, pharmaceutical management, and information technology, my ability to communicate effectively stands out as one of the most relevant to a successful career in mental nursing. My broad exposure to customer service and my technical orientated work have consistently placed me in a position where it was necessary to communicate with a wide range of individuals from different backgrounds. This is not unlike situations in healthcare and in particular, mental nursing, where one might anticipate coming into contact with a wide variety of individuals, with varying backgrounds, motivations, educational levels, and ability to communicate.
In my role as a mental nurse, these contacts could range from doctors, pharmacists, and scientists, to hospitalists, cleaning and maintenance staff, dietary, laboratory technicians, and clinicians, to a whole host of patient possibilities. In addition to the obvious potential gaps in language and education within a potential patient population, the mental nurse must also address the issue of a patient population dealing with mental or psychiatric illness in one form or another. There is no way of anticipating what a nurse may encounter in a patient population, and accordingly, those highly attenuated communication skills are paramount. Being able to switch conversations at a moment’s notice out of necessity, as between medical personnel and a largely non-communicative patient, is an art form in and of itself, and one that I have personally been cultivating through the various experiences in my career thus far.
As noted herein, this ability to communicate, together with my demonstrated skills as a collaborator, is also illustrative of my ability to think and act critically. To know, understand, and be able to interact successfully with an ever-changing audience, requires extreme flexibility and being open to new ideas, approaches to problem solving, and opinions, beyond one’s own. My technical work has reinforced in me the importance of analysis and critical thought. Having worked in fields where quality standards eschew much margin for error, I developed a passion for problem identification and resolution, quality control, and precision. These skills have continued to bode well for me in the patient-care realm, as I am able to execute upon doctors, pharmacy, and other medical personnel’s orders.
From the human side, I am also enjoying the opportunity to care for and work with patients to improve their quality of life. I am absolutely certain that this is something that will become even more rewarding with the increased scope of responsibilities that accompany being a mental nurse. The rewards that come from empowering another person to acknowledge their present condition, and to take charge of the range of possibilities and outcomes available to them, are essentially limitless. While also acknowledging that this field can be highly stressful and challenging, I believe I am entering into mental nursing, with eyes wide open, and armed with the skill set, education and professional experience to deliver and to receive the best returns possible.
Given my passion for care giving and for communication, I can also foresee becoming established as a practitioner, and eventually sharing such gifts with others, as has been done for me, by way of teaching and internship opportunities, allowing others to shadow and observe my work, and serving as a mentor for others desiring to get into this wonderful aspect of healthcare.