September 1, 2016
Sierra Valley Rehab Center
On August 28, 2012, I took a visit to Sierra Valley Rehab Center in Porterville CA to do my job shadow. I arrived to the rehab center a bit before 9 a.m., so the person I was going to job shadow wasn’t there yet. Dora was the name of the person I job showed, she arrived 10 minutes after I got there and then when she arrived she checked in and then she took me to a little office so she could drop off her belongings. I chose to go to Sierra Valley Rehab Center because I was searching up rehab centers and this one was the one that caught my attention the most and I know this is the place where I want to work at as a Licensed Vocation Nurse.
At first I was nervous to ask questions but as time passed Dora made me feel comfortable enough to start asking her questions. The first thing I asked was that what had inspired her to choose this career and said she has always liked helping people and what a better a job where she could help people out. I also asked her that how did she get started in this field and she said, “Volunteering with the Red Cross and other institutions.” About an hour later a patient came in and she took care of his wounds. I got a bit scared, but she was just told me not to get scared that the patient was going to be ok. After she took care of that patient she was checking up on other patients that were there, but all of them seem fine so she was just in the rooms with them for like 10 minutes. She said that day was pretty calm because there’s sometimes when it could get a crazy and disorder because most of the patients there are old and sometimes they just don’t listen to them when they are trying to help them. I asked her that what was the most challenging part of her job was and she said, “Understanding and respecting other culture beliefs.She said it was just hard and sad because some patients blame them for their sickness.
It was 12:30p.m. and it was her lunch time so we went to her office and we sat down and ate. While we were eating I kept on asking her things and I learned that for this job you have to be very patient with your patients and with your co-workers because the doctors could be rude. What I really liked about her job was that she mentioned that you do get a lot of hours over time but that you could get 2 sick days and 7 days of vacation and also she said that it’s very easy to trade shifts days because the other LVNs were very nice. Also another thing that she said that really interested me was that she said that she went to Porterville College which is not far at all and in about 4 years she was done but because she took some time off so she said that if I don’t take some time off I would be done in about 2 years half or 3 the most. She also mentioned that grades don’t really make a difference to get into the program which I disagree a bit because grades should matter.
Before I wasn’t so interested and excited to go to college because I didn’t know what I really wanted to study for but now that I did my job shadow I am really excited to go off college and start a new chapter in my and study to become a LVN someday. I think it’s a very interesting job and I really like it because like Dora and many people out there I also enjoy helping people that need me. Also I feel like this is a good job for me because I really enjoy learning new things every day and like Dora told me you never stop learning with this job.