Clarice Esimai

The best career advice I've ever received is don't go somewhere for money, go because you love it. I know some people, especially people from Africa where I'm from, enter fields like nursing not because they want to be good nurses or have the values of good nurses, but because they were told it's number one for job security and number two, it pays good. Most people don't go there because they love it, they only go there because they were told it pays good. So I was told to go into a field because you love it, not because there's money or no money into it.

I would tell young women to follow your heart and follow your desires. For us coming from Africa, especially Nigerians, parents are so strict with their children when it comes to education and pressure them into fields they didn't want to do. I've seen most of them, once they become what their parents wanted them to do, they leave it and say 'okay, dad, mom, I have graduated, I'm done with it, this is your certificate, now I'm gonna do what I want to do.' So I would tell people to follow your heart and follow your desires, so long as you know what the job opportunities are for the field you're about to do. It's not about the money. Like, let's say someone goes to nursing school and they are paying her all this money, but she doesn't love her job. What if her not loving her job costs her her patient's life? So it is important to do what you feel like you are comfortable doing, not because you are pressured. If this is what you want to do, that's what you want to do.

The biggest challenge in my field is that it's a demanding job because we get to stand a lot, especially during long cases. For example, if you're doing a neuro case, it would take about 4 or 5 hours just standing. I would say mostly the challenges are just standing on the job for a period of time before somebody actually relieves you off for a break. I have done 8-hour cases, like a vascular case where we couldn't get the blood to flow through the veins properly because the patient had blood clots everywhere, so the doctor went from 'okay, let's do this' to 'let's do that,' like scratch, change of plans, let's think about this. It's just thinking about the next steps to help this patient up and moving with the right veins and everything.

The most important value to me is family. I put all my patients in the same perspective as my family. I want each person to go back to their families, and I also want to go back to my family. I feel like family is the greatest, most important thing. I treat everybody the same. I would treat a patient just the way I would want my mom to be treated. Family doesn't have to be blood, it's even those people you're taking care of. I'm always thinking, okay, what if my mom is here next? What if my dad is here next? What if my child is here next? I want them to be treated the same way I treat these other patients.