Public health nursing postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My interest in public health nursing grew out of noticing how often the same people returned to my ward. On a respiratory unit, readmission is not unusual, but reading discharge summaries I began to see patterns that had little to do with medicine: a flat with damp bedrooms, a bus route that no longer ran to the community clinic, a man who managed his inhalers perfectly but could not afford to heat the room he slept in. Clinically we did our jobs well. What we rarely had time to do was act on the conditions that sent people back to us.

For my undergraduate dissertation I carried out a small service evaluation of smoking cessation referrals from two medical wards. With permission from the ward managers and supervision from my tutor, I audited a sample of nursing records over a three-month period and compared documented referrals with a short staff questionnaire about confidence in raising the subject. The numbers were modest and I was careful not to overclaim from them, but the questionnaire responses were consistent: staff were willing to have the conversation and unsure what happened afterwards. I wrote a one-page summary of the referral route and where to find it on the intranet, which the practice educator agreed to include in ward induction. It was a small change, and I do not know whether referral rates shifted, but the project taught me how to design a question I could actually answer with the data available, and how to present findings honestly when they are limited.

Since qualifying I have worked on the same respiratory ward and completed a six-month rotation with the community respiratory team. Visiting people at home changed how I assess. I learned to look at stairs, kettles, pill boxes and who else was in the house, and to take a history at the pace of the person rather than the shift. I now mentor second-year students on the ward, which has made me more deliberate about explaining reasoning rather than simply demonstrating tasks. Working alongside a specialist nurse who ran group education sessions showed me the difference between advising individuals and designing something that reaches a population, including the work of making a session accessible to people who did not read the leaflet.

Outside work I lead a weekly health walk for a local scheme. About a dozen regulars come, most in their sixties and seventies, several referred after cardiac rehabilitation. My job is mainly logistics and conversation, but it has taught me a great deal about sustaining behaviour change over years rather than weeks, and about how much people value being expected somewhere. I also help my mother on a community allotment plot, where I have learned how a shared, informal space does quiet health work that no service commissioned.

My reading has followed this interest. Michael Marmot's work on the social gradient in health has shaped how I interpret what I see on the ward, and I have found the Nursing and Midwifery Council standards for specialist community public health nursing useful in understanding the breadth of the role, particularly the emphasis on population-level assessment alongside individual practice. I am aware that health visiting or school nursing would ask me to work with families and young people rather than the older adults I know best, and I welcome that shift. I am realistic about the demands of returning to study while practising, and I have discussed manageable hours with my ward manager. I want to bring the pattern-noticing I have developed in acute care into a role where I can act on those patterns earlier.

Review this personal statement

Latest reviews