Cindy J. Visser Memorial Nursing Scholarship

Lydia Jackson: Associate Nursing Degree Triton College Nursing 101 Hello, and welcome to a little piece of my life. My name is Lydia Jackson, and I am a nursing student at Triton College. I would like to tell you about my journey and why I chose nursing as my future profession. There was this hospital with a beautiful statue on top of the building and I thought to myself they must provide excellent patient care there and wanted to be a part of it. One of my main goals in life is to become a nurse and I thought this would be a beautiful place to start. But life had a few changes in store for me. and 17 years later I was busy helping my children achieve their goals while putting mine on hold. After I helped my children achieve their goals, I started to focus on mine once more. I always knew I wanted to do more in life, so I applied to that beautiful hospital with the statue on top, which is now RUSH hospital and just like that, my journey began. I began my career at RUSH as a housekeeper and for 6 years, I enjoyed it. I felt like I was doing my part in keeping patients and staff safe. While working in housekeeping. I worked hard to keep everything clean in the patients' rooms; I would help the nurses with their patients when they were busy with other patients. This was when I knew my main goal was to become a nurse. I began to work my way up in the RUSH system. By this time, I was on a mission to complete my goal of becoming a nurse. One day, the director of quality asked my former boss for a position I hold today as an Infection prevention observer in the Clinical Effectiveness Department. I later found out that the chief nursing officer Angela recommended me for the position. Since coming to this department, I've won the award for our 1st annual Founders Day award for giving my all to our patients and staff, the awards are for non-clinical employee of the year, and best team of the year award. I've implemented campaigns to improve our hand hygiene compliance that have been highly successful and much more. As my team would say I hit the ground running. My improvement with the department has made me a better person in general because I have a voice that's heard. This only motivates me more and so do my coworkers. They encouraged me to continue my education and fulfill my goal of becoming a nurse. I took some classes to get used to being in the classroom and it paid off. I am about to start my nursing classes soon, so here I am again following my dream of becoming a nurse to continue to provide excellent the absolute best patent care I look forward to using my method of process improvement to further impact patient safety and to promote the best possible health outcome for my community.

I was inspired to become a nurse after seeing how kind and gentle the hospice care nurses were with my grandfather before he passed away. The nurses not only cared for him in his most vulnerable state but also for the rest of my family and catered to our emotional needs with such love and compassion; it is something I'll never forget. From then on, I knew I wanted to be that person for someone else's family. Those nurses went the extra mile to make sure all of us were being cared for and spending the quality time we needed with each other. While we were not their main priority, they made it a point to make us a priority and we knew that our loved one was in capable hands. Although I don't necessarily want to be a hospice nurse, I do want to be an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) nurse and I know I can show patients and their family members the same care and compassion as the hospice nurses did for our family. From working in the ICU as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), I was able to closely see how those nurses navigated difficult situations and/or diagnoses and prognoses with patients and/or their family members. Watching them effectively deliver meaningful, quality care during someone's worst moments has been some of the most eye-opening moments of my life. Seeing just how much a small act of empathy can go is so motivating and inspirational for me. Caring for someone in that state is an honor and a privilege to me; knowing that there is a family that is putting their trust in you (and the rest of the healthcare team) completely is so rewarding and it brings me joy knowing that if they're placing that trust in me, then it may take some of the responsibility and worry off of their shoulders. I think I can help carry on Cindy's values by providing the compassion and care that patients need but also doing it in a way that showcases top professionalism and quality care. Through my time as a CNA and an Emergency Department Technician (ED Tech), I've been able to learn how to grow a rapport with patients and learn what makes people feel cared for in their times of need. Nothing brings me greater joy than when a patient feels like not only have their physical needs been met, but their mental and emotional as well and I cannot wait to, someday, be that nurse for someone.