workshop
Exercise 1.1: Laying Your Foundation
Open Section 1: Foundation – Understanding the Committees’ Lens in your workbook. Write one to two sentences for each of the three prompts:
- How does my background show readiness?
- I worked as a travel nurse in multiple ICUs, including SICU, CVICU, CCU, MICU
- I’ve taken on sick patients with multiple pressors coming from a helicopter transfer so I’m used to high stress situations
- I worked w/multiple interdisciplinary teams to achieve improved patient outcome, whenever possible, and gave a thorough report during rounds, including suggestions to further the patient’s progress as well as advocating for them
- I have experience with ECMO/eCPR and have formal training for it as well
- My critical care background is broad since I’ve picked up shifts in PACU, ED, and other floor RN assignments to gain multiple perspectives
- I worked as a travel nurse in multiple ICUs, including SICU, CVICU, CCU, MICU
- Where have I demonstrated resilience?
- During my tenure in the military as a medic (Hospital Corpsman), I learned to be autonomous in the combat and garrison field which transitioned into civilian practice
- The military also taught me to think critically, and advocate aggressively for my patients, even when other more higher ranked personnel would berate and belittle me to try to back down. This transferred over well to the ICU where I have had conflicts with physicians and other advanced providers but with a more subtle professional demeanor
- I am a first generation college graduate student as the offspring of immigrants who started their lives from scratch with little to no support from outside family because they were simply not available. I had to navigate the academic & professional system while tending to my own finances and caring for my own family unit
- Having travel RN experience helped me create a welcoming and warm environment to a new set of nurses that I try to assimilate with in order to gain their trust through competence and pre-emptive friendliness. This is something I’ve had to learn as emotional intelligence because I was initially a severely shy & introverted kid due to my immigration status
- What specifically motivates me toward CRNA (beyond clichés)?
- The autonomy and lifestyle. My husband is Latino and I would like to extend my practice to patients who are primarily Spanish speaking. I’ve hired a tutor to polish my Spanish to help me make the patients feel more safe and at ease
- I want to be able to work autonomously as an anesthetic provider and gain full-time employment as a locum tenens CRNA to be able to gain a wide breadth of clinical skills and then utilize whatever months I have free to spend with my in-laws and retired parents overseas
- I want to support and encourage future and hopeful SRNAs of color to show them that this path is feasible
Don’t overthink this exercise. Your answers don’t need to be polished. The goal is simply to capture your first, honest thoughts. These reflections will become the building blocks for your personal statement.
Reflect on a moment when you recognized the limits of your current role and felt compelled to pursue nurse anesthesia. What specifically prepared you for this transition?
At nineteen, as a Navy hospital corpsman, I was solely responsible for the health of 125 Marines — making autonomous clinical decisions in environments where there was no one else to defer to. That early comfort with high-stakes independence followed me into nursing. Once I became an RN, I sought out certifications that pushed past standard bedside scope, including ultrasound-guided peripheral IV placement. Over time, my technique with transverse-plane imaging became sharp enough that I could thread a needle into vasculature other nurses had given up on — even mid-code, when adrenaline and time pressure make precision hardest.
A physician who watched me place lines during codes began mentoring me toward arterial line placement. We researched the scope of practice together and confirmed it fell within what an RN could legally do. For the first time, I felt the outline of what my career could become — not just executing orders, but exercising the kind of independent procedural judgment I’d had as a corpsman, backed now by deeper clinical training.
Then hospital leadership changed, and a new policy prohibited RNs from placing invasive lines — regardless of individual competency or scope of practice. My training stopped mid-stream. What stayed with me wasn’t just the frustration of a skill left unused; it was the realization that my ceiling as an RN wasn’t set by my ability, but by my license. I had already proven I could perform under pressure, think autonomously, and execute advanced procedures safely — what I lacked was the terminal degree and scope of practice to do so without asking permission. That gap is what CRNA school closes.
Provide an example of when you advocated for a patient or safety concern, particularly when doing so challenged existing practice or hierarchy.
“The surgeon’s going to be angry at you.”
The PA said this as a warning, not a threat. I had just told him what I found in my patient’s room — and what I intended to do about it.
My patient, a man in his forties, had undergone repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm that morning. Hours later, he could no longer feel his feet. I checked his pedal pulses myself, then asked the charge nurse to verify — she thought she felt nothing either, but wasn’t confident enough to say so definitively. Uncertainty up the chain wasn’t going to be the reason nothing happened.
I paged the surgeon’s PA. He came to the bedside, ran the Doppler over both feet, and heard silence where pulses should have been. Still, he hesitated. Calling the surgeon back — after his team had gone home, on a case he considered a success — meant admitting something had gone wrong. Rather than make that call himself, he handed me the surgeon’s personal cell number.
I called. I laid out the findings in order: initial normal pulses, then progressive pallor, numbness, inability to bear weight, and no urine output in six hours despite adequate fluids. The surgeon’s response was immediate and sharp: “Are you sure? Are you ABSOLUTELY sure? I’m not calling my team back because you THINK you found something.”
I didn’t back down. As a bedside nurse three years into practice, I had no formal authority to demand a surgeon reassemble his team — only the clinical picture I’d built and my confidence in it. I told him I’d confirmed my findings with two other clinicians and a Doppler, and that I stood behind the assessment. There was a pause, then: “You’d better be right.”
He arrived visibly irritated, clearly expecting to prove me wrong. He scanned the patient himself — and stopped. The kidneys were losing perfusion. Within the hour, the surgical team was reassembled and the patient was back in the OR.
The surgeon never thanked me. My patient did, the next morning, once he could feel his feet again.
That night, I challenged a surgeon’s judgment, a PA’s reluctance, and an unspoken hospital hierarchy that discourages nurses from escalating past a physician’s initial dismissal — because the alternative was watching a treatable complication become permanent. It confirmed something I’d already begun to feel in my career: that my advocacy shouldn’t have a ceiling built by my job title. As a CRNA, that same instinct to act on clinical certainty, even against resistance, would be matched by the autonomy and training to follow through on it myself, at the bedside and in the OR.
BRAINSTORMING DRAFT
USC Personal Statement 1 DRAFTs
Reflect on a moment when you recognized the limits of your current role and felt compelled to pursue nurse anesthesia. What specifically prepared you for this transition?
As a hospital corpsman in the military at a young age of 17, I was already fully responsible for the health of 125 Marines. When I finally got my RN, I continued to take initiative by signing up for certifications that pushed my boundaries such as ultrasound guided peripheral IV imaging. Overtime my proficiency began to expand that I was able to use the transverse technique to guide the needle into tricky veins. News of my skill reached a well-meaning physician attending on the floor. He believed in me and wanted to cultivate my talents into placing difficult lines such as arterial lines (we researched that it wasn’t against the board of nursing for RNs to place ART lines), especially since I proved that I could place US PIVs during high stress situations such as codes. Unfortunately, management changed and new policies were implemented. It was now against company policy to allow me to place invasive lines, and my training came to an abrupt halt. It was this time that I realized the limits of my RN training. I now need to pursue CRNA to obtain a doctoral degree to practice autonomously as well as to be able to do procedures that require advanced training.
Part 2
Provide an example of when you advocated for a patient or safety concern, particularly when doing so challenged existing practice or hierarchy.
A Spanish speaking only patient arrived at our ICU and was enraged over the fact that his peritoneal dialysis didn’t work anymore and he had to now undergo hemodialysis. Despite the medical team’s insistence that it was the only way to save his life, he continued to refuse treatment. He felt betrayed. Instead of trying to badger him into compliance, I
“The surgeon’s going to be angry at you.” The surgeon’s PA advised me of this when I informed him of what I found. In the SICU today, I had a young patient diagnosed with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). I made sure to assess his pulses every hour and to notify the surgeon of any abnormal findings. The patient, in his 40s, was able to ambulate short distances, but after a few hours after the surgery, he no longer had palpable pedal pulses. I continued to assess him by asking questions about what he felt: and he admitted having paresthesia and no longer being able to bear weight on his feet. They weren’t painful but he began feeling numbness. I had a charge RN verify my findings and she thinks she also didn’t feel anything but was unsure. So I called the surgeon’s team and the PA came to evaluate the patient himself at the bedside. I demonstrated the patient’s missing pulses through a doppler machine — couldn’t hear pulses. And he was hesitant to agree with me, mostly because he was afraid of drawing the surgeon’s ire. He said the surgeon would not only throw a tantrum because he had to call back his entire surgical team after they had already gone home, but also because he had to admit that it wasn’t a success. The PA was afraid to call him so he gave me the surgeon’s personal cell phone to call him myself. When he answered, I provided my findings objectively, describing my initial findings and the patient’s increasing symptoms of paresthesia, paleness, loss of pulses, numbness, and inability to walk as well as not urinating 6 hours after his last fluid intake post surgery. The surgeon pressed me: “are you sure. Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE??!? Because I can’t come back for any little thing just because you THINK you evaluated the patient’s pulselessness correctly.” I doubled down and continued to advocate for my patient, informing him that I had others evaluate the patient too and I believed that I was correct. Then he ended the call by saying “you’d better be right.” The surgeon then talked to the PA and eventually they came up with a plan. The surgeon came by the bedside, looking unhappy with me, then assessed the patient himself using ultrasound imaging. He admitted that the patient’s kidneys began to lose perfusion and ordered that the surgical team be brought back to the OR ASAP. He didn’t thank me later. But the patient did.