(Rachel. Photo Credit: BBC News)
After graduating from nursing school, a woman said she “won’t give up” in her job search since she was so delighted with the care her husband had when he passed away from COVID-19.
Eric Ohene-Adjei’s husband passed away in April 2021 following seven weeks of critical care at Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales (UHW).
Rachel started studying for a GCSE in maths and English as a result of the care he received.
This led to an access course in nursing and a university nursing degree, which she earned last week.
Rachel, 44, is graduating into a nursing profession with fewer available vacancies, a news correspondent reports, but she says she remains determined to secure a job.
Last month, the NHS workforce body overseeing Wales confirmed that close to 400 nursing and midwifery graduates were still without NHS positions following the first round of job matching.
Rachel, who lives in Cardiff, said she missed out during that first round but is optimistic about the second, having put in applications for three new roles.
She said she would not give up, explaining that she needs to become a nurse and has worked too hard to show her children that anything is achievable.
Her path toward nursing traces back to 2003, when she met her husband Eric in what she described as a moment of love at first sight in a bar.
They married four years later and went on to have three children.
Rachel said she had never enjoyed school and left without passing her GCSEs in maths and English, but credited Eric with building her confidence over the years, describing him as a consistently supportive and positive presence in her life.
Eric contracted Covid in February 2021 and was hospitalised at the University Hospital of Wales, where he later died.
Rachel said witnessing the care he received planted the idea in her mind that she wanted to help and care for others in the same way.
Following his funeral, she went back to complete her GCSEs before enrolling first in a nursing course and later in a full nursing degree at university.
She acknowledged that balancing her studies with raising her children was often difficult, at times requiring all-night study sessions.
With her children being very active and social, she had to shuttle them to football, rugby, dance, or friends’ houses, meaning she had to set strict limits on when she could and couldn’t get her own work done.
She admitted to moments of doubt, wondering whether the time away from her family was worth it, and said the academic side was made harder by never having been particularly strong in school.
Still, she pushed through with support from family and friends, partly driven by a desire to show her children that age and past setbacks don’t have to stand in the way of achieving a goal.
At the graduation ceremony, the couple’s 13-year-old daughter, Ebony, told online report, she was very proud of her mother for everything she had endured, adding that her father’s death had been extremely hard on her mother and that she had tried to support her through it.
Rachel said the moment of graduating still didn’t feel real, recalling how a friend had always told her she should become a nurse even though she doubted her own abilities at the time.
Asked how Eric would have reacted to seeing her graduate, she said he would have been immensely proud, just as he always was.