I spent the first 27 years of my life in my native Peru, where I earned my first degree in nursing. Twenty-two years later, now forty-nine and partially Americanized, I yearn to prepare myself for career advancement in nursing practice education and eventually return to Peru as an expert in this area. My maturity will empower me to excel in your doctoral program since I have 21 years of experience in Internal, Emergency, Pediatric, and Correctional Medicine. An accomplished FNP with numerous certifications in these areas, I want to advance professionally in the cause of the underserved and research, write, and publish about Latino issues in health care and mental health nursing.
I am self-motivated, resourceful, highly adaptable, and a quick thinker and learner; I do my best as a team player. A committed professional with a history of assuming increasing levels of responsibility, I aspire to become a leader, recognized by my academic and healthcare communities as an outstanding professional. My central long-term plan is to implement a program for advanced practice nursing at the distinguished University XXXX of Peru, where I earned my BS in Nursing in 1988.
I want to practice, live, eat, sleep, and breathe psychiatric and mental health nursing with one foot in the USA and another at home in South America. I think this dynamic of two mental health nursing communities for the balance of my career will be enormously influential. My ongoing professional activity in the USA makes me even more vital in contributing to nursing in Latin America and vice versa. Working in Peru will inspire novel creativity in my practice in the USA, and greater sensitivity to issues, especially in terms of cultural identity concerns prominent on Hispanic agendas.
I am convinced my experience would be put to beneficial use in your distinguished doctoral program at XXXX University because my cause plays to some of your greatest strengths. I see your program as the ideal location to empower me in the development of both culturally and linguistically sensitive educational tools for nursing education designed to address the issue of stigma and the myths and realities of the complex relationship between Latino populations, on the one hand, and psychiatric treatment and services on the other. Your program is ideal for learning to think creatively about family-centered strategies for providing Latinx people with mental health services.
While working in XXXX Hospital (San Diego - Dec 93 - Jul 04), I volunteered much of my time as a recovery nurse with MOST (Mercy Outreach Surgical Team); flying to Mexico was one of the highlights of my career, providing care for children with everything from cleft lips to complex flap rotations and burn scars. I want to learn to think of myself as a heroic nurse on the front lines of my field. I am interested, for example, in how the Latino population has grown dramatically in the USA; Latinos are also increasingly found in rural areas of the USA, which already suffer from a shortage of mental health professionals. As a well-prepared DNP with a post-master certification in Family Psychiatric Mental Health, I will be able to maximize my contribution to my field, working to improve access, especially to culturally and linguistically appropriate psychiatric care for a range of mental health needs. Thank you for considering my application to your exceptional program at XXXX University.