A local nurse from Guyana is working to help and inspire other nurses, especially foreign-educated ones, with the release of her book, “Blossom Where Your Feet Are Planted.”
Alisha Kingston was born and raised in Guyana, moving to the U.S. in 2017 with her husband, Samuel, who was in the military at the time. Kingston started her career in health care while still living in Guyana, initially planning to pursue medical school in Cuba on scholarship.
However, as her parents’ youngest child, Kingston wasn’t ready to move away and decided to stay home and pursue nursing instead. After graduating from nursing school, Kingston eventually attended medical school for about a year before choosing to leave after getting married so she could move to the U.S. with her husband.
Kingston currently works part time at Onslow Memorial Hospital, homeschools her children and is working toward becoming a nurse practitioner.
“It’s been a beautiful journey,” she said. “I try to be as open as possible — open to learning, open to growing, open to exploring new cultures and so forth.”
Coming to the U.S. changed Kingston’s perspective about nursing, too. She said the scope is wider and the opportunities are greater.
While there were some challenges, like the process to transfer her transcript from Guyana and sitting for the National Council Licensure Examination, Kingston said she’s learned a lot and hopes to share that knowledge with others.
“I just blossomed, through a lot of research, especially with the help of my husband,” she said. “When I came here, I had no one to guide me, so it was just going off of research and trying to get things started out.
“After doing a lot of research and so forth, I found so (many) opportunities and ways to grow that would not only help foreign-educated nurses, but working at a hospital, I’ve realized that there are even nurses locally that grew up here, that were born here, that still do not have the know-how as to where to go from here.”
Kingston took all of her research and knowledge and wrote “Blossom Where Your Feet Are Planted,” now a published book.
She said the book includes information for foreign-educated nurses, like what agencies they need to go through and how to transfer transcripts, as well as tips for all nurses, like dealing with imposter syndrome, how to pay for school without acquiring a loan and more. There’s also advice from other nurses, both from Kingston’s home country and others, as well as a “letter to your future self.”
“I really just want others to not have to go through the challenges I’ve had,” Kingston said. “(I’ve had) a lot of time crying. I’ve had a lot of time where I’m like, I don’t know where to go from here. It has taught me resilience, because I came from being my parents’ baby to coming here, starting a new life.”
Kingston said she even has a goal of one day starting a foreign-educated nursing conference to expand her reach.
“Blossom Where Your Feet Are Planted” is available for purchase on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble. Kingston also runs a Facebook page and website called The Foreign-Educated Nurse Hub.