She is a nurse practitioner who specializes in chemotherapy at Pinnacle Health West Shore Campus. Although I was not able to job shadow, I learned what happens in the average day of a nurse practitioner. Patients are brought back to chemo rooms where Nurse Shelley meets with them to discuss treatments and what procedures she will be performing. She accesses the patient’s medi-ports and connects him/her to the IV and programs the IV pump to distribute the medication. Following the treatment, Nurse Shelley checks the patient before he/she leaves for side effects and discharges the patient. Nurse Shelley brought me pamphlets to read and a small book with chemotherapy terminology which taught me more about her specialty and gave me information that I can carry with me throughout my medical field career. She also taught me a trick to help patients that are afraid of needles by pressing down their skin before puncturing the skin. No matter where I go in the medical field, there is a high probability that I will need to use that trick one way or another. Interviewing a nurse practitioner sparked my interest for a leadership role in the medical field that is the perfect balance of showing compassion and maintaining professionalism. At that point, I was set on becoming a nurse practitioner but I thought it would be beneficial to continue exploring jobs with different responsibilities in the medical field.
After shadowing a doctor and interviewing a nurse practitioner, I thought it would be helpful to broaden my horizons and look into medical field professions that are more behind the scenes. I decided to look into pharmacy because a pharmacist still interacts with patients, which is important to me, but works on his/her own in a completely different