What It Takes to Become a Nurse
By Michael Keraa, Chairperson, School of Nursing
Nursing is learned twice: once in the classroom, where theory is explained and tested, and again at the bedside, where that theory has a pulse, a name and a family waiting outside the door.
It demands long shifts and unforgiving examinations, yet CUEA’s growing waitlists indicate that the reward continues to match the difficulty.
Fresh Eyes: A First-Year’s View
For Kay, a first-year nursing student, the campus still feels enormous. Orientation had been a blur of new faces, new routines and a uniform that still felt stiff.
She is nervous about the workload, but pride outweighs the uncertainty. She had made it into nursing school and is eager for the theories taught in lecture halls to become practical skills at the bedside.
Looking Back: A Final-Year’s View
For a final-year student, the same campus has begun to feel smaller and more familiar. The nerves of first year have gradually given way to confidence and competence earned on real hospital wards.
She remembers being Kay once. Watching new students arrive no longer stirred nostalgia as much as quiet reassurance. The exhaustion was real, but so was the distance she had travelled and the competence that journey had built.
The Practicals that Make a Nurse
Before qualifying, nursing students pass through skills laboratories, simulated wards and Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), where they are tested on procedures ranging from taking vital signs to administering injections and dressing wounds under pressure.
Basic life support and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) certification are mandatory, while every procedure has to be supervised and signed off. The practical requirements ensure that students do not simply understand nursing in theory but demonstrate the skills required to practise it.
When the Wards Went Quiet
The recent hospital strike in Kenya did not spare nursing students. Some who had already been deployed to clinical placements found themselves absorbing responsibilities beyond their training as staffing levels fell. Others had their placements postponed, leaving required clinical hours delayed.
For the students, the disruption offered a lesson that no lecture hall could fully teach: the profession they were preparing to enter was shaped not only by clinical skill and compassion, but also by the realities facing the health-care system and its workers.
The corridors are full again. Zikomo, to everyone who made the return possible.
A Tribute to Florence Nightingale
No reflection on nursing would be complete without Florence Nightingale, the English reformer who helped shape the modern profession.
Known as “The Lady with the Lamp” for tending wounded soldiers during the Crimean War, Nightingale founded the nursing school at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in 1860. Her emphasis on hygiene, record-keeping and trained nursing care helped establish principles that remain part of nursing education today.
For students preparing to enter the profession, her legacy offered a reminder that nursing had always required more than technical knowledge. It demanded discipline, compassion, resilience and a commitment to caring for people at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.
Nurses take the Florence Nightingale Pledge a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath (taken by doctors) created in honor of the founder of modern nursing.