Professional Biography Essay

Introduction

Nursing has a vast array of emerging processes, which are significantly related to the individuals’ wellbeing and healthy lives (Hood, 2013). Being from a nursing background, I am experienced with evidence-based nursing practice as a bachelor degree holder. Now, I have decided to pursue a Master’s degree and then PhD degree to enhance my career in the nursing field. This present study, therefore, focuses on critically analyzing my career graph along with my interests, thoughts, and professional outlooks for my educators and the future employers. Based on the domains of Nursing and Midwifery Councils and different personality tests I developed an analysis of my professional characteristics.

Biography

The term biography simply reflects on the facts of an individual’s life. It depicts a journey of life along with the experiences and individual life events, which include meaning in one’s life history. It is far different form curriculum vitae (CV), because biography includes intimate details of an individual’s experiences, which ultimately helps in the development of an analysis of respective person’s personality (Jacobs, 2014).

Professional Biography

Professional biography is a summative aspect through which an individual represents his or her skills and knowledge to the employers or any other professionals. It is an art of professional skill development and portrayal, which helps in describing an individual’s professional outlook, along with his specific talents, grounds of interests, presence of any special occurrences, and incidents related with the particular field of interest or profession (Collins, 2012).

Concept of Biography

The concept of biography can be different for each individual. One can use biography as the portrayal of his or her personal and professional experiences, as well as, incidents of life span. Additionally, an individual can develop it as a reflection of his interests throughout the life and accomplishment of the goals. There are several types of biography including autobiography, biography, and memoir. Memoir reflects a specific event or situation of an individual’s life that occurs in the respective person’s lifetime (Literary Devices, 2017).

Critical Reflection of My Education and Career Life

From my high school days, I was looking for a suitable field of my interest, which is capable of providing me a meaningful aspect that can create and add value in my future life. During the school days, once my brother suddenly fainted and my mother was panic stricken, as well as, became unconscious. At that very moment, I felt if I could have the knowledge of basic nursing, I could have helped both my brother and mother. I understand that the requirement of healthcare is one of the prominent issues in the society, which has significantly drawn my interest towards it. The first or the initial thing that was on my mind was to pursue special course in the domain nursing as a career. By choosing this career, I have not only been able to support my family but also help people in crisis. I pursue my studies in Institute of Health Sciences in general nursing under the supervision of highly qualified teachers. In my early career, I worked in King Fahad Hospital in Madinah, where I was greatly exposed to the scientific and practical development including critical heart diseases along with intensive care.

Based on my experiences, I came to know that the patients not only need physical care from the nurses but also require psychological supports, which make them comfortable and recover more quickly. I worked in the special department of heart diseases for two years and then moved to Al Ansar Hospital in Madinah. There, I started working in the emergency department, which had significantly influenced my career. There were several patients, who could not speak in Arabic or English. Considering the situation, I was keen to learn the other languages and gain knowledge of the other cultures to provide a better assistance to the patients. With the experiences that I gained from working in the emergency care department, I got to know about the patients, who were to be communicated properly due to the prevalence of language barrier. This allowed me to enhance my listening capability along with enhancing the care in a friendly manner.

When I was assigned in the emergency care department, I joined a nursing college to pursue my bachelor degree in nursing. The lessons of degree courses were more effective and enjoyable to me due to my previous experiences in the emergency care department. After the completion of my degree course, I was appointed as the director of the nursing department for my qualification and experience. I believe that nursing is a vast genre, which needs inclusion of different knowledge and skills. Correspondingly, I need to develop my administrative capabilities so I joined management and leadership courses along with health quality courses, which helped me in improving my experiences and outcomes of care services in my career. Recently, I received several certificates of appreciation and acknowledgement from the Directorate General of Health Affairs in Medina and Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia.

After gaining comprehensive knowledge regarding practical field of the nursing, I felt that I need to make my contribution in the field of nursing educational. This can help the future nursing students to be able to serve the health care service in the forthcoming years. I focused on the educational policies of nursing field to pursue my new career as a nursing lecturer and I received great acceptance and financial support, which motivated me pursue my Masters and PhD courses. At this point of time, I was able to understand comprehensive nursing education can lead people to serve and provide better care to the patients. Moreover, this time I also felt that bachelor degree was not enough for being a teacher so I decided to pursue my Master’s and PHD degree. I believe that the in-depth development of knowledge and experiences during the higher level of education can enrich my professional and personal knowledge and skills. At the same time, I also felt to enhance my English language skills for developing my speaking and writing skills. I started my Master’s degree program in Salford University in the recent year. Even being a foreigner student, I was significantly helped by my professors.

Nursing and Midwifery Councils (2010)’s Four Domains

Nursing and Midwifery Councils (NMC) have specific criteria through which nursing students can undertake the competencies that are required as the future service providers. The mission of NMC is to develop a protection for people by maintaining the standards of education, as well as, training for the nurses and the midwives. It is also associated with a mandatory guidance and educational programs for the future nurses. There are four domains, which can be included value to the career of nurse and midwives (Nursing & Midwifery Councils, 2010; Nursing & Midwifery Councils, n.d.). Contextually, it is also observed that six Cs (i.e. care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, and commitment) in nursing can be critically allied with the aforementioned four domains (RCNI, 2015). Here, in the following section, I have discussed these four domains according to the NMC’s norms. In addition, six Cs have also been discussed, which has helped in my professional and personal development.

Professional Values

Nursing is a subject that I personally prefer to pursue my career to serve for global patients and the students, who seek for the knowledge and skills. The value of nursing is allied with the tendency of care (first component of six Cs) to those people, who really need it. Care is the professional commitment for a nurse and it defines the core duty of a nurse (RCNI, 2015). Nursing care profession has significant core values including integrity, human dignity, altruism, and autonomy along with social justice (Fahrenwald, Bassett, Tschetter, Carson, White & Winterboer, 2005). It is expected that an individual professional nurse should incorporate these care values within his or her practices, as it can help them to enrich their knowledge in the field of nursing. The roles of a nurse is considered as a moral agent, as their relationship with the patients is associated with ethics of caring. It is the portrayal of a comprehensive framework that comprises moral accountability and integrity of nursing commitments (LaSala, 2009; Sellman, 2011). Besides, the professional commitments, personal development of the individual, who are involved in the nursing professional field is also essential (Parandeh, Khaghanizade, Mohammadi & Mokhtari-Nouri, 2016; LaSala, 2009). In the context of individual development, personally I feel that professional commitment towards my first career option in nursing was able to build my moral accountability and integrity towards the collaborative goals.

Considering the perception developed by Parandeh et al. (2016), it can be asserted that human dignity is an important part of ethical issue within the nursing education and professional practice field. It can also be associated with the second component of six Cs (i.e. Compassion). Due to the nursing profession, an individual care service provider must associate with several other people from different cultures and social backgrounds. To treat different people and make them believe in quality outcomes from health care services and the entire care framework, dignity, empathy, and respect can be possessed as moral obligations. The dignity of a nurse is only able to come from communication, developing competency, professional growth, motivation, and value based education (Parandeh et al., 2016; RCNI, 2015; Nursing & Midwifery Councils, n.d.1). With these beliefs in the statement, I want to develop my education and nursing career as a dignified health care service provider, who adequately focuses on nursing field to develop betterment in overall field of evidence based nursing practices.

Based on the report presented by West Liberty University’s Department of Health Sciences (2016), altruism is the value of nursing profession, which is mostly allied with selflessness and humanity. It is a concern that must be involved within the practical field of nursing to advocate the welfare, as well as, the wellbeing of the health care service field. This includes patients, nurse co-workers, and other associates directly or indirectly related to the health care service provision. In the professional practice with respect to the nursing field, such kind of selflessness is significantly required for individual nursing practitioners and needs to be developed among the nursing students as well. Additionally, self-determination is a concept and essential trait that the nurses should develop in his or her evidence based practice autonomy in professional practice respect the rights of patients to make their own decisions in health care. Moreover, social justice is one of the values of nursing profession that relies on fair treatment procedures beyond the patients’ economic status, race, disability, culture, and ethnicity among others (West Liberty University, 2016). Based on the understanding of these qualities, personally I feel that there are various essential traits in the professional nursing field and its evidence-based practices. Therefore, I need to e imply these traits in my characteristics and practices for being a part of this vast emerging genre.

Leadership, Management and Team Work

According to the understanding of Guyton (2012)’s research findings, I was able to generate my perception of nursing leadership, management, and team work. It considers professional excellences and dimension of nursing care service essentials. This includes service provisions, quality of care, associate people, finance, service oriented nursing culture, empowerment, courage, job satisfaction, commitment, and effectual communication with patients and co-workers of service environment. Considering my personal philosophy of nursing, I want to develop myself as a successful leader for my co-workers and my students as well. To fulfill my wish I pursue my Masters’ and PhD degree in nursing field, as it can comprehensively assist me towards my better future as a contributor in the field of modern nursing development. According to the six Cs approach, nurses should serve the patients with courage and commitment for managing and leading a care team (RCNI, 2015).

Systematic evaluation, ability to shape the future services, identification of priorities, recognition of own values, and principles, learning form experiences, facilitation of nursing students by developing their competencies. In addition, management of care associated risks and promotion of shared decision making process among others are the prime aspects that a nursing leader should imply, advocate, and facilitate for contributing in the field of nursing (NMC.Org. UK., 2017a; Ellis & Bach, 2015). Based on the understanding developed by the domain of leadership, management and team work, I came to understand that nursing is not only about care, education, and advanced practices. It also reflects the personal ability of an individual to lead the future generations towards the better quality care, optimize services and promotion of betterment.

Critical Analysis of My Skills

Based on the comprehensive and critical discussion of personal and professional competencies for an individual nursing career pursuer, I understand the there are various traits that cannot be developed through evidence based education and professional practices. However, it can be significantly developed with the assistance of self-assistance, as well as, improvement of the appropriate characteristics. Considering this approach, I want to know my characteristics and critically analyze it accordingly. Contextually, I developed certain assessment including Johari Window, Myers Briggs Personality Test, and Honey and Mumford Questionnaire, which are able to portray my characteristics being a part of the nursing field. Based on the results of Johari Window, I critically analyzed my traits, which is given below in Table 1.

Conclusions

Considering the overall discussion of a professional biography, I clearly portrayed definitions and differences of biography and professional biography. Based on the understanding of professional biography’s contents, I provided a brief reflection on my educational aspects, and professional interests along with the accomplishments that I have already achieved. This professional biography report can be considered as my personal checklist in order to achive my future goals in the field of nursing. Based on the domains of NMC, six Cs and analysis of personal characteristics, I critically understood that I need to develop my skills, knowledge, and traits for completing the future wishes and I look forward to it.