By Khyree

Man…What’s up pimpin my name’s Khyree. I’m a resident in this Camp Sweeney place. I’m in here because of some dumb and stupid decisions that I made in the past. Anyways what I learned in here is that when you don’t have a plan you most likely going to fail. So now when I get out of this shit hole I plan on going to Chabot College and honestly try to take classes to become a male nurse.

It’s going to take me about four years of school and a lot of homework, I know it kind of sounds funny me wanting to become a nurse and all but hey once I get there I know it’s going to keep me from doing dumb stuff. Plus the pay starts off at 34 dollars an hour so yeah it’s going to be all good for me and my familla.

As an aspiring nurse, I was happy to hear about the Senate Finance Committee’s approval of a health care bill aimed at covering about 94% of Americans. With that many people getting medical care, you’d think the government would have thought about the workforce necessary to give that care.

Apparently it hasn’t.

The current health care bill doesn’t address the shortage in health care workers, especially primary care physicians. That affects nurses too because the more patients there are, the more doctors are needed. And the more nurses are necessary to support those doctors.

But even without an increase in patients, there’s already a nursing shortage.  I’m worried because once I become a nurse, I don’t want there to be too few healthcare workers to care for all the sick people. Patients will suffer and the doctors and nurses will get overworked.

I plan on attending a community college in January to study to be a licensed vocational nurse, or LVN. I will start by attending a two-year college. After that, I eventually plan to become a registered nurse. When I heard about Obama's American Graduation Initiative, I was pretty excited because I feel that right now I can't afford to go to a four-year college.