[HeartsOpenWide]

I have been a Certified Medical Assistant for a little over three years now. How many of you had past medical experience, and in what? For you that are starting nursing with out experience how did you know it was for you?

[Achoo!]

I am a CMA as well. I graduated in 93 and decided to go back to school 3 years ago.

[Fun2Care]

I'm a Medical Assitant as well. (graduated 11/93, I think...wow I can't remember lol)

I've always wanted to be in the medical profession. I graduated high school in '91, and started taking classes toward my BSN. I got burned out, went to MA school, and now back to become an RN. (ADN, then ADN-BSN)

Good luck to you!

[Student_Nurse_WV]

Other than volunteering in hospitals, I am new to medicine. I think it is fascinating, I just hope I will be able to do it!

[NurseBetti]

Hey ya'll! Well I'm new 2 medicine and after my freshman year in college and realizing that I really didn't want to do pharmacy, I decided to try nursing and I think that I will like it. I want to become a CRNA, so I'm going to stick with it and see how it goes. I think nursing will be a great field. :hatparty:

[Jessy_RN]

I'm a certified pharmacy tech, I always knew I wanted to be in the medical field. Life happened and certain circumstances let me to pursue a career in nursing. I'm currently a student and haven't had second thoughts yet.

[bethg5]

I worked as a nurses aide for a very short time when I was 18 and also spent my free time helping out at the nursing home when I was in High school. Other than that I really don't have any nursing experience.

However, right before my son turned two he ended up in the intensive care unit with extremely low iron and was going into congested heart failure. It was a student nurse who asked me to have his iron checked at his sisters doctors appt. Over a year of my son being extremely pale and the doctors never mentioned it even though I constantly brought it up. They just said that I have very fair skin.

Not one single doctor could figure out why my son was so sick!! Test after test, still no answers. They just said malnutrition! Which they didn't bother to figure out why he wasn't eating. The next test they wanted to perform was bone marrow, I refused! The chance that it would have been cancer was so rare that there was no way I was going to let them keep poking at my son.

Finally I took it into my own hands and requested all his medical records from the Pediatrician and hospital. I researched day and night! Finally after all my research I read an article from a specialist at Cincinatti's Childrens Hospital and I knew from that moment that my son had the exact illness that this doctor had been doing research on. I emailed him and sent him my son's records and sure enough this is what my son had! The only doctor in St. Louis that would listen was my son's pediatrician, so off we went.

After that experience I knew that I could possibly make a difference if I was to become a nurse or work somewhere in the Medical community. Plus I love reading any that is medical related.

[Mandarella]

9 years secretary/na then tele tech. Can't put a price on how much I have learned through those jobs. I work with a girl who had never worked in medical before and she is one of the best nurses I have met. Good luck to you!

[dettwiller5]

I worked as en ER secretary for about a year and also ran the volunteer department at a hospice. I was also a Health teacher in middle school before deciding to pursue nursing. Being a health teacher doesnt have much to do with nursing but you can see that the interest in the health field has always been there.

[kayel]

Well ..... does candy striping count? I did that for years as a teen .. then moved on to a summer job as a porter-aide for one summer in Physio Therapy and two summers in Occupation Therapy. This was 21 years ago, btw.

My mom was an O.T. at the hospital and I felt comfortable working there .. although I didn't realize that was part of my feeling lost at other jobs/courses. I think medicine is a good fit for me.

Just a cute aside, my 6-yo son asked me yesterday if I was going to be a doctor or a nurse and that he thought I should chose doctor because he had read a good book about it and could be a big help to me!