Personal Statement (Admission Essay Sample)

Personal Statement
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Personal Statement
In the course of their career developments, Nursing practitioners find themselves with the urge to pursue advanced degrees to effect change to patient outcomes and healthcare system delivery. The current degree program rapidly embraced by the nursing professionals and Nurse Practitioners globally is the Doctor of Nursing Practice. As per statistics of 2017, there existed 303 DNP programs in the US offered in all states with close to 5000 graduates every year. Modern nursing requires certain educational qualifications with many acute care hospitals requiring Registered Nurses to have a BSN. However, those already with BSNs are advancing to master degree programs to better their skills or take up complex nursing related obligations. However, despite the importance of acquiring BSN and Master’s Degrees, more nurses are realizing the importance of the more advanced DNP.
I am currently a charge nurse in an OB/Maternity unit and a nursing instructor at UCLA. I teach OB/ Maternity related skills to Bachelors and Master’s degree students. In recent years, research indicates that there is a significant increase in the number of graduates of Doctorate of Nursing Practitioners (DNP), indicating an increasing demand for the course. In this statement, I briefly give my DNP journey and its relevance to the nursing profession, thus, the need to pursue the course by all Nurse Practitioners.
Some years ago, as an NP, I never imagined pursuing an advanced nursing degree citing its cost, relevance and the amount of work involved. I first learned of DNP in my undergraduate years when it was cited as the future of nursing with the potential of helping transform nursing from the routine bedside patient-level to a system-level. I also learned the program covered other aspects such as leadership in health policy and technology. However, at the time, I questioned the relevance of such aspects in nursing since diseases and finding their treatment was the core of nursing. After graduation, I learned the relevance of the program. I had the opportunity to work in an NGO in Latin America working for rural communities aiming to reduce pregnancy-related maternal mortalities. Despite my extensive knowledge of gynecology and medications, maternal mortality was still prevalent due to poor healthcare policies and management. I enrolled after a year in California State University DNP Consortium program in Los Angeles where I am in my final year for the DNP program.
Graduates from a DNP program are required to complete a final DNP project or a thesis aiming to translate evidence to practice and should reflect one’s specialization and demonstrate the ability to think at the system level. For my DNP project, I would like to address how to reduce maternal pregnancy rates. Globally, in every minute, there are records of new births and pregnancies. There are also cases of abortion and maternal deaths. Maternal deaths result from pregnancy complications, interventions, omissions, incorrect treatment or indirectly from underlying diseases. The incidences are higher in developing countries due to poor healthcare and resource unavailability to avoid such deaths, which lead to other social and economic losses such as child death and loss of family economic resources. Intervention strategies include prenatal care, risk assessment, and traditional birth attendant (TBA) training, improving and ease of access to emergency obstetric services and incorporation of skilled birth attendants.
Pursuing DNP offers great opportunities and advantages to nursing practitioners. Besides offering an alternative to the often-burdening research doctorates such as Ph.D., DNP as a clinical doctorate, it brings practical change to patient and healthcare system delivery in clinical settings. Doctorate holders can practically change healthcare delivery practices and boost individual workforce advancement. Being more clinical than research focused, DNP offers nurses an opportunity to, within a shortened time compared to research, put into practice science evidence-based practices to patients. As a result, DNP holders can mentor other Nursing Practitioners (NPs) on practices and leadership roles in healthcare organizations and research-based applications that boost the outcome, efficiency, and effectiveness of nursing practice.
DNP creates parity with other advanced healthcare providers with doctorate-trained medics such as physicians, dentists, and psychologists. Contrary to the belief that the nursing doctorate is tedious, DNP allows an NP to specialize and become an expert on the topic of interest, allowing fluency in the latest research and approaches. Furthermore, DNP increases the chances of being a member of boards of healthcare organizations thus; DNP holders can influence public policy on health issues that affect the nursing profession. Moreover, DNP opens up opportunities in both clinical and non-clinical settings. Covering the eight essentials of DNP curricula including evidence-based practice, population health, leadership, technology, and healthcare policy, DNP prepares nurses to tackle the complexities of modern medicine. As a requirement in many companies, DNP ope