Vera Oduraa Agyekum, RN, MSN, CNN

I attribute my success to being disciplined, hardworking, and never giving up. When you are disciplined, you try to do what you're supposed to do at the time that you have set for yourself, and you don't joke about it. I believe in working hard and not giving up, because you may try for the first time and it may not work, but that is not the end of it. I always encourage myself, 'hey, you can do it again.' When I came to the U.S. in January, I decided to take the NCLEX without having read much, just to see how it looked. I failed the first time, but I didn't feel so bad. I just said, 'hey, you gotta move on, restructure everything you're doing, re-strategize, and you get it.' And lo and behold, I went for the second time and I got it. I always say that failure is something you have not tried. If you try and you don't get it, it's not a failure, you just need to go again, because slow motion is better than no motion. You can put a tortoise here, a snail here, and a falcon here. Though the falcon will run faster than the tortoise, they'll all get to their destination. So, slow motion is better than no motion.

The best career advice I've received comes from my patients and my boss, who constantly encourage me to keep doing what I'm doing because I'm really changing lives. My patients tell me, 'keep being you, keep being the amazing nurse, keep having the smiles on, keep brightening the corner, wherever you are.' That makes me happy because I know that what I'm doing, even though I think I'm just taking care of one person, I don't know what I'm doing to that person until I see it someday or the person comes back to me. Sometimes patients come and say, 'hey, keep doing what you are doing, you're really doing great. Anytime we see you, some of us are so happy, and we are already healed when we see you.' I keep to that advice and try that wherever I am, I do my best. My boss always compliments me for that, saying 'hey, you're doing great, you're doing great, and keep doing what you're doing.' That encouragement keeps me going.

The advice I would give to young women entering nursing is that they should think about the professional ethics of the industry rather than just thinking about money. If you are entering the nursing profession and all you think about is that you've heard nurses have money and earn a lot, you don't know where you are going, because nursing is a call. Being a nurse is like being a pastor, because the pastor is trying to heal people spiritually in the churches, and we as nurses are called into God's healing ministry. Therefore, they should take everything they are doing seriously. Every life matters. Every single life matters, so they shouldn't joke with somebody's life, because it's like they have handed over a gun to you to go and defend somebody, and you should not kill the person. We have to know that our actions and inactions have a way of coming back to us. Being a nurse, you have to be very critical in everything you do, because there's a slim line between death and life when you are a nurse. The same medication that you can give, if you don't get the right dose, it can kill somebody. So you have to be extremely careful and do your job well. We shouldn't just sleep over the job. Know that every life matters, no matter how old the person is. At least you can add one day to the patient's life, and that would be a good blessing for you. We should all know that our actions and inactions have consequences. They shouldn't give up, but they should know that nursing demands a lot of sacrifices. There are times that you are feeding the patient, but you yourself are even hungry. Today I brought food to work but couldn't eat it because my patients needed me. Nursing demands a lot of sacrifice and a lot of calling, so we should give in our all when we want to be a nurse.

My biggest challenge right now is getting some of my patients to be compliant to treatment. I have a lot of patients who are so deviant that they don't want to come for their dialysis treatment. The ones that get most challenging for me are the young ones, because they're youngsters with a lot of life ahead of them, and if they don't comply to their dialysis treatment, they can die. Already, their kidneys are not functioning, and that is why they are doing dialysis, to help work for the kidneys. There are a few guys who usually don't show up. Sometimes, the whole week, they will not show up. I get so worried, and I feel like I could do something to help in that aspect, but I can't do much. I call them, but sometimes they will not even answer their calls. Today, two people didn't show up, and I called several times, leaving messages upon messages, and nobody answered. I keep educating them. I tell one guy who has seven kids, 'do you want to die and leave your kids? You have to come so that you don't come,' which literally means when you come for the treatment well and everything is going well and they schedule you for a kidney transplant, you're not gonna be here again. But if you don't come and don't get all these things done, when they select you for a transplant and see that you're not abiding by the treatment regimen, they'll take you off the list. So far, the most challenging part of my job is not having all my patients compliant to treatment.

The values most important to me in my work and personal life are integrity, discipline, being true to myself, being hardworking, being a great team player, and being compassionate. I want to keep my integrity, because without that, nothing matters to me anymore. I am very disciplined and stay as true to myself as possible. I'm hardworking, and I like being a good team player. One major thing is that I'm extremely compassionate, both at work and outside of work. These are the values that I always want to keep.