Persistence ensures realisation of nursing dream

Plagued by several set backs, coupled with the need to provide for her children, Natalie Cole, through sheer resilience and determination, has successfully completed and achieved her long-held dream of becoming a registered nurse.

Cole, who hails from the farming district of Zion Hill, near Highgate in south-east St Mary, have always wanted to become a health aide worker, having developed a passion to assist those that are in dire need of good healthcare.

Such desire never left her, and she recounted that although she held jobs at the Jamaica National Bank and at Courts Jamaica Limited, her desire was always to attend nursing school. But according to Cole, that passion and career choice suffered many delays, to the extent that she often entertained the thought of giving it up, only to realise that the passion would simply not go away.

“I literally dreamed about administering patient care to people and caring for them,” Cole recounted.

“I left high school (St Mary High School) with every intention of going to nursing school. I started working in 2003 and stopped working altogether in 2009. After my partner left for overseas, I decided to see how I could restructure my life to get it back up and running. My family, especially my mother, was very supportive. However, living on my own, and the fact that I have a child, I knew I needed to fend for myself.

“In 2003 I decided to go back to school, which I did, and passed some subjects. I got the jobs at Courts furniture store and at Jamaica National, where I worked for three years each, but afterwards the redundancy came ... . Sitting at home for nine years, writing job applications and not getting any favourable response, I got so frustrated. I was also doing interviews, but without success. I remember the last interview I did I was so frustrated that I began to pursue joining the police force,” she added.

The challenges encountered by the 38-year-old started to take its toll, until finally a decision was made by her to get herself a degree.

“I wanted to do this initially when I was younger, but then I was thinking about the fact that I have a child, so going to school would have taken too much out of me. So I decided that probably nursing was not the way because it is a full-time programme, and I could not afford full-time school because I have a child to feed. I changed my mind about doing it and, instead, tried doing a business programme at the University College of the Caribbean.

“Work would not allow me the time to complete the course, because by then, things had become more complicated as I now had not only one child, but two, with a third on the way. Before going to UTech (University of Technology), I had applied to The University of the West Indies. I had gotten through, but there was some amount of delay in getting the letter of acceptance through the mail. Finally, when I got it, it was too late to accept the package,” she explained.

Cole applied to UTech in 2015, which allowed her to begin in 2016 in the nursing department. She received a letter of acceptance and shortly after did the interview, but even then she was a bit hesitant, as consideration and care had to be given to her three children -- one of whom was only a baby at the time.

It was a rather frustrated Cole who pondered the way forward, having to cope with the reality of attending school in Kingston, while living in St Mary, and to be able to care for her three children at the same time. But through what she described as fervent prayer to God, she manged to stick to the programme, even though she made it abundantly clear that she had no idea where the financing would came from.

“I knew I wouldn’t be able to come up with the money, but after being assessed, I did the interview anyway. When the question came up as to how am I was going to finance my tuition, I explained that I was in the process of pursing a loan from the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB), but if that failed, then my close-knit family would provide support. Fortunately, I was accepted and when I applied to the SLB, there was never a problem and my application was processed speedily.”

ROUGH ROUTINE

The St Mary native spent the next four years attending UTech, travelling from St Mary to Kingston every day. It then became routine for her to be up at approximately 3 a.m. daily, so as to be ready by 5 a.m. to get a bus into Kingston. Cole noted that there were days when she would get home from school at midnight, which was rather rough on her.

She completed her studies on September 17, 2020, as a graduate nurse with a honours degree from UTech. She is currently in the process of submitting application letters to the Kingston Public Hospital.

“That is where I want to be based because of the experiences that are there to gain. You get to serve to the best of your ability when you are in areas like that. I am now a certified registered nurse with the core responsibility for patient care, and it also encompasses being able to assist the patient in the areas of health and wellness, and ensuring that they are comfortable even up until the stage of dying,” Cole said.