During my recent interview process and through reading of various hospital documents, I have become more aware of the importance of developing a professional nursing portfolio. A nursing portfolio is basically a snap shot of one's career. It is now expected and/or required when applying for jobs or when challenging the clinical ladder within institutions. I've been told and have read in multiple places that it's never too early to start working on your portfolio.
The past couple days I've been doing some internet research and information gathering (so grateful my school doesn't cancel my access to online journal articles through the library) on nursing portfolios. I am a very visual person and so I want to SEE an example, what's included, and to understand how it's presented or submitted.
While searching for articles and examples on-line, it occurred to me that I had already started a nursing portfolio, except mine was created and then subsequently forgotten after NUR 100 (my very first nursing course two years ago). At the time, my instructor, who was requiring it, did not call it a portfolio. I have no recollection of what she called it or how she framed the assignment, but I do not remember the word portfolio being used. But at the time, we were all pretty clueless about why we were being asked to develop a website. It made absolutely no sense to us at the time and even a year or more later we were still joking about the assignment - still clueless! If you are curious, here is mine.
Obviously it was created without regards to professionalism. I'm not kidding, on the "About Me" page under Factoids, I actually include "I can touch my tongue to my nose. My tongue regularly palpates my tonsils." Oh boy! At the time I was just looking for filler and looking to amuse my instructor. I remember that I proudly went above and beyond the requirements for our assignment. Definitely a little too far. Anyways, my website is desperately out of date and not even close to the professional portfolio that I would actually create and submit. But it's good for a laugh now.
One year from now I will be gearing up for my first performance evaluation and at that point I will automatically be bumped up from RN-Clin I status to Clin II status. But to advance further on the Clinical Ladder, I will need to submit a portfolio for consideration. It could be a couple years before I would pursue Clin III status and that's time enough to misplace important documents or to forget stories that might be appropriate as an exemplar of my clinical and/or leadership skills. My thinking is that by simply collecting and writing supporting documents over the next couple years, I will have much less work to do when the time comes to prepare and finalize it for submission. It seems overwhelming now because I'm at ground zero, but over the next year or two I can certainly spend time working on it (once I know what MY hospital is looking for). And then the point it is to never really let it get out of date.
Looking back, I really wish I had understood the reasoning and rationale behind that website assignment. It makes sense now. Perhaps it wasn't sufficiently explained or maybe it was explained but it just went over my head? Either way, I'm sure there will be a lot of "ah-ha" moments in the coming months and years as I connect the dots between my education (and what we thought were bordering on ridiculous, time-wasting assignments) and my actual practice. Life is funny that way.
One of the most significant things I learned in nursing school is that the majority of people/patients need a rationale in order to fully embrace the need for change (or to do homework). It's one thing to inform a man with high cholesterol that he needs to change his diet and lifestyle and something else all together to explain WHY he must work to lower his cholesterol levels. Preaching rarely gets you the same results as teaching. Well, at least that's true for me. I need to understand the rationale and the bigger picture before I'm able to embrace new information or change.
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