Ways of KNowing

Since becoming a registered nurse in 2007, I have not had much formal clinical experience in Women’s Health Nursing. This specialty clinical track was chosen based on what I know about being a woman. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary defines the term “Expert” as the following: having or showing special skill or knowledge because of what you have been taught or what you have experienced (Merriam-Webster) By way of this definition, I consider myself an expert in general womanhood. WHNP is a focus on the primary medical management of women’s health throughout the phases of a woman’s life. Many aspects of a woman’s life are variables that will affect her general health and wellness. For example, relationships, children, career, family, finances, environmental factors, spirituality, and other influences collectively impact a woman’s health and wellness.
In my own nursing experience, I recall a difficult client care situation that perplexed me with serious ethical questions and allowed me to unfold a “bigger picture” of the woman’s life. This woman contracted HIV during her first sexual encounter at the age on nineteen. I had the privilege of knowing her when she was the age of thirty-three which for her was the end of her life due to the disease processes. I spent a good deal of time with her in clinical practice and came to a full understanding and appreciation of her life story but not at first. I created many barriers for myself and for her with respect to vast comorbidities and clinical needs beyond comparison to many other patients I had encountered. The barriers were created because of my intolerance and objectivity I had created against the HIV/AIDS population. I learned later that she was the loving mother of a child that she could not physically see because she had lost her eyesight. She was alone. She was abandoned by the father of the child who was the carrier of the HIV she had contracted. She was angry. She was scared. She was mistreated and abused by her