 Hello and welcome back to my channel. If you don't know who I am, my name is Claire Carmichael. I'm a third year adult nursing student. So today I want to talk to you all about what brought me into nursing, what made me realise I wanted to be a nurse. Some people, they were born into a profession, they knew from the very beginning from when they were like tiny, tiny, tiny. But for me, I had no clue. The first memory I have had of any career I wanted to do was when I was around, I think I was nine years old and I had a little post office set and I loved stamping things. So I wanted to be a post lady and I wanted to stamp things, either that or I wanted to be an official stamper for somebody. That was my main goals when I was nine years old. However, when I was seven years old, so let's rewind the time, take me back to my seven year old little self and I grew up with my nan and granddad and unfortunately my granddad, he passed away of cancer, but he hated hospitals, he refused to go into hospital so he wanted to be cared for at home and luckily he got those wishes respected. So I watched him sort of slowly decline at home. I remember not fully understanding what was going on but I knew something wasn't right and I remember seeing these amazing district nurses. This was the first time I had ever really remembered seeing a nurse and I remember them doing all these things with my granddad and I remember just looking up to them and thinking wow, these people are something special. These are wonder women to me. Who are these people? Why do I admire them so much? What is it about them that I love? I had no clue, but I knew I admired them and I knew that I just fell in love with nurses at that point. But even with that being said, I didn't realise I wanted to be a nurse. I knew I admired those people. I knew that they were doing an amazing job and how they were with my granddad and how compassionate and caring they were. I admired them about them but I didn't think that's the job I wanted to do. And then a little bit later on in life so I was 15 years old and my nan unfortunately got cancer and she passed away and I remember being 15 and I'm already going through my own hormones, my own emotions trying to find out where I fit into the world but to have to deal with my nan dying of cancer and not understanding anything. I didn't understand anything about how the body works, how it's affecting her, why she was losing weight, why suddenly her mobility's slowing down, why she needed a wheelchair, all of these things and I just watched her sort of deteriorate and deteriorate before my eyes and I didn't understand it and I didn't know how to help, I didn't know how to stop it, I didn't know how to prevent it. I didn't know how to care for my nan. This is someone that's always cared for me and it just, it was a really, really upsetting time and I think that was one of the other reasons why I wanted to go into nursing was to get that knowledge, to get that theory behind me so that I can help others and help care for others effectively with the knowledge behind me of what something's doing to somebody's body. I'll be able to care for somebody effectively if that makes sense so I couldn't stop it unfortunately and my nan did die, my grandad died and in this life there are going to be patients that die and you're going to have to deal with that but for me I, if I have the knowledge I can care for someone, I can give that person the best care possible during their last moments of their life and hopefully also prevent it, prevent it from getting to that stage, seeing the warning signs, seeing the symptoms, recognising all of those things as a nurse and saying to someone okay let's test you for this, test you for that, let's check you out, let's get you better treatment, let's slow this process down, give you a better quality of life, give you pain management, all of these things that I just didn't know back then and it frustrated me because I didn't know how to care for my nan, I didn't know what to do about it and it really upset me but this is why I wanted to do something about it, this is why I thought do you know what, no I need to do something about it but again like I've said I didn't know how to, I didn't know where to start, I didn't think I was intelligent enough, I didn't know how to do these things, I felt like a failure, had a lot of self-doubt, self-confidence issues, a lot of self-esteem issues, I didn't think I could be a nurse, I didn't think I was intelligent enough to be a nurse and alongside that I always saw nursing as a really high profession, I always thought you needed like this fancy education, I thought that you had to come from a family background of nursing to actually go into nursing and be a nurse if that makes sense, so I never thought myself as that sort of person at all, I literally, I came from a background of nobody went to university, all of my family lived in council houses, everybody had hospitality jobs, sales advisor jobs, working in vision gypsharps, things like that, so I never saw myself as being capable of being in a high profession such as nursing but I think my main point saying that was because with nursing and doctors, teachers, roles like that you need a degree to go into the profession, I didn't feel like I was smart enough to do a degree, I didn't think I had that intelligence to do a degree so being unable to do a degree, I couldn't do any roles such as nursing or doctoring because I just, I didn't feel like I had that level to go and do that so I did go and do other jobs that I could do without doing a degree, so then following that, when I, after I left school, I left school with literally nothing, I didn't have any GCSEs, I got a B for arts, a C for French, the rest were D's and E's, write them off because nobody wants D's and E's if you're going to apply to do your degree so this was another knock of my confidence, I literally had no confidence, I had no self-belief, I didn't know I could be a nurse so I did follow my mum's footsteps in the end and I actually went and worked as a housekeeper in a hotel which to be honest, I'm going to say this now, housekeeping was one of my top favourite jobs to do, it was one of the best experiences, I absolutely love it and do you know what if I wasn't doing my nursing now, I would probably still work as a housekeeper because it's such a great job, I had a great team around me, we used to put on the radio we'd make the beds, we'd have a dance, every day was a fun day doing housekeeping and some people might think what why do you want to do that but do you know what no, it's one of my favourite best jobs I've ever had, I worked in hospitality for five years, I make sure of housekeeping, waitressing, reception work, so then I was talking to someone and I was just saying I don't know what I want to do with my life, I don't really want to work in hospitality, I don't know where I should be in the world, I don't know what I want to do, I don't know where my career lies, it was actually someone's comment to me that said I can see you as a nurse, I can see you nursing and I was like what, I was like no I couldn't do that and then literally I think it was either that night or the very next morning I got onto the job search, I had to look at nursing and I found my very first residential care home position it came up and I was like okay care home what do I need to do to do this and then I had a look at the requirements I was like okay I don't need a degree to be a carer, they just want NVQ which you can do on the job it says I can do this so I applied for the position I explained about my GCSEs I said I've done really bad but I'll do whatever it takes to get them because I really want this position and luckily for me they said okay no problem we'll put you on the learn direct and get your level one and two IT enumeracy we will get you doing your NVQ two if that's the route you want to go into and we'll get you out there and we'll give you a job basically so I say yes this is amazing so in 2005 I got my very very first care assistant job which I absolutely adored it this home was one of my favorite homes it was just a little small home I think I had about 18 or 20 beds it was quite small really small team fantastic team fantastic manager we all got on so well we had a such a laugh every day at work it was amazing so in this care home was where I actually discovered my love for nursing I absolutely fell in love with caring of people I fell in love with looking after people I fell in love with the compassion the empathy the doing everything I can to make someone's life better I loved it and I would get the district nurses come and go because we were just a residential home we didn't have our own nurses so when we got the district nurses come and go I was constantly sitting with them I was really engrossed in what they were doing I was like this is amazing this is fantastic this is where I can see my career lie but again I didn't think I had the intelligence to do something like that so I never really questioned it and it wasn't until I worked alongside a really just I want to say this first she was amazing she was a great great carer the way she cared for patients was fantastic she was funny she was great but this one day patient wanted a boiled egg on toast and she come to me and she was like Claire don't know how to boil an egg and I was there like what do you mean you don't know how to boil an egg and like it really threw me baffled me because I'd always cooked for myself from the age of 16 17 so I never thought about how other people are and how other people can or can't cook or anything like that but to me I was like in my head it was so it's like a simple thing I was like but it's an egg everyone knows how to boil an egg and she was like I generally don't know how to boil an egg or you show me and I was like oh okay so I showed and she was like is that it I was like yeah so she was really surprised too so yeah so she just didn't know and she I just got an acceptance letter to go and do the nurse diploma back then our courses had nurse diplomas and nurse degrees and she got accepted onto the diploma and I was like how did you get accepted on the nurse diploma like don't you need a degree and all of this and she was like no no you just need your mvq2 and your mvq3 and you can get on your diploma and I was like I can do this I can do this definitely can do this and then I thought do you know what if she can't boil an egg and she can be a nurse I can definitely be a nurse I can definitely do this no offence to anyone that can't boil an egg but because of her inspiration that's what made me do my nursing so I knew what I had to do I had to get my mvq2s my mvq3s and then I could apply for the diploma however in my job within that residential home they didn't do mvq3s unless you were higher up in the rank so there was no positions going there was not really much room for progression I went to my manager and explained that I want to do my mvq3 but unfortunately because I was just a sort of band two care assistant and you had to be a band three to do the mvq3 there was no funding for me so oh it really it disheartened me that I had to leave but I had to do it for my own benefit and progress further and do the career that I wanted to do so I did unfortunately leave that position and then went to work for young adults with learning disabilities because they needed a team leader and then I could do my mvq level three so I applied for it I was I actually got the position of care assistant to start with and then I applied again for the team leader role because I didn't get it the first time round they said you just need to just push yourself a little bit more you need to come over with a bit more confidence in your interview sell yourself all of that something that's actually always been told in my interviews is I need to sell myself more so I am working on that but second time round I did get the position I became a team leader in charge of a team it was amazing really great experience and I got to do my mvq level three so I did it so I got on to my mvq level three and I finished it and completed it but by the time I went to apply for nursing which was in 2009 or was it 2010 sorry it was 2010 when I finally got round to actually applying for the nursing diploma and so I rang up the university I wanted to know how I went about it how I applied for it and then they told me really sorry don't do the nursing diplomas anymore they've been completely scrapped we we are a degree only now profession so I was just like what I was I was gutted if I just applied the year before or if life didn't happen I might have got in and oh I was gutted I was just like what I can't do this I can't do the degree again I had it in my head I wasn't smart enough and I'd heard about the 10,000 word dissertation in a degree so I was just like I can't do that I can't write 10,000 words of a dissertation that's not me I'm not confident enough I'm not smart enough I haven't got it in me to do something like that so that really really put me off applying for the degree just for my own self-worth and self-confidence was so low I didn't think I could do it however I did look into it despite all my fears all of my worries I did look into it and I thought okay so they need an access course to get on to the degree so I looked into that I looked at Walsall College where I actually went and I did my access course I finally plucked up the courage and it was a year long it was part time the class is full time but actually when you go I think it's only something like 17 hours so you can manage to work around the access course well I did anyway back then this was like 2010 so yeah so I did my access course and then after my access course I applied to go to uni and it has taken me a long time from then to here but um I knew that that's where I had to be where what I wanted to do and I went out and I did it all because of a girl that couldn't boil an egg and she inspired me to do that so hands up pool of eggs