In her own words
What inspired you to study nursing?
Fizza: What inspired me into nursing was actually a bunch of strange events really. I worked in an office and I hated working in an office. I did a management course and we did a personality test and it kept coming up with ‘nurse’. You know, you go online and you do all these quizzes, and a lot of the ones I did came back with ‘your perfect job would be nursing’. One of my friends is an ICU nurse and she said I had the right attributes for it. And she kept telling me ‘come try it, come try it’.
What was an experience that convinced you that you'd made the right choice?
Fizza: There was a lovely wee man who was palliative. He had come in for a short procedure and he was blind, but he asked me if I was going dancing on Saturday night and I said, ‘Sure, if you’re coming with me!’ And he said, ‘I’ll be up for that!’ It just broke my heart because he was so ill and yet still so happy and full of life, and ready to take me dancing! And I just, oh, I wonder what happened to him sometimes. I do have a lot of stories like that, but when people are able to look to the positive that’s an amazing thing to see.
What has been the most challenging part of the course for you?
Fizza: It has been a challenge to juggle everything between placement, university, and home life – and begging, borrowing and stealing people to watch my children at odd times, and asking ‘can you stay at my house while I do night shift?’, but it has been worth it at the end of three years. And they’re very happy, my children – they’re excited to go to graduation.