A Novice's Echelon

The idea is that "practice makes an expert". I remember my first clinical rotation, it was in one of the medical-surgical wards of a government hospital. I was a novice back then, fresh from the classroom and on to the scary world of real patients and real diagnosed diseases. I remember looking enviously at the tenured nurses who were honed by years of experience. Their decisions were like instincts, their movements almost like second nature. They look at a patient, assess the client with the same manifestation and deliver what seemed to me like tailor fitted interventions, customized exclusively for that patient. Different and yet resulting to the same efficient and desired outcome. Our difference? It's the way I perceived it, being the beginner that I was, a manifestation was what it was, to the Expert nurse who was the charge nurse in that ward, it was a symptom of an elaborate web of signs and symptoms. Knowing these stages makes me aspire more, practice more and seek for more information in the field so that I could achieve one day the highest level of nursing.