Miranda Doerkson just completed her first two years of nursing at CNC, with her most recent practicum sending her to Bangalore, India. Her experience there - a month of working and teaching in local hospitals - was life-changing. Before the trip, Miranda, who is 20-years-old, had only ever travelled to Mexico and Cuba.
“Everyone has such different approaches to health care,” she said. “In India, you can’t teach like you do at home. There’s different supplies, different education. Before we left, our instructors kept saying, ‘You are not going there to change anything.’”
The study abroad experience was about reflection for Miranda. Her instructors would constantly ask her how she would approach a task differently.
“You had to work really hard at the language barrier,” she said. “And everything works so fast there. I learned so many skills - to advocate for myself, my clients and my education.”
As a bonus, Miranda and the eight other nurses who went on the trip became very close friends and learned a lot about themselves.
“I had never considered teaching before,” she said. “But by the end of the trip, I thought ‘Yep, I want to be an instructor one day.’”
Miranda, who is originally from Williams Lake, always knew she’d work in a helping profession. Growing up, she was often sick. When in the Children’s Hospital, she remembered a nurse approaching her to ask how she was doing.
"A good nurse can make all the difference for patients,” Miranda said. “You feel their empathy and compassion. It’s a real privilege to be able to offer that. In my first year, on my first clinical shift, I knew right away that it was right for me. I immediately fell in love with it.”
Although she knew nobody when she started at CNC two years ago, Miranda jumped right into the program. She got to know her instructors and students well, and volunteered regularly at scrub sale fundraisers and health fairs. In her second year, she helped tutor first year nursing students.
“CNC is so good at giving opportunities to be together and to volunteer, to have lots of great experiences,” she said. “I’m definitely going to miss it. I really enjoyed it there.”
This fall, Miranda starts her third year at UNBC. She’s not certain where she’ll end up once she’s done but is interested in going overseas again. And recently, she said, she’s taken an interest in long term and palliative care.
“One of my CNC instructors explained to me that dying is a journey,” she said. “As a nurse, it can be your job to make that journey more peaceful, more acceptable. If you can make it good for family or the client themselves…I don’t think you can really beat that.”