Considering Nursing School

Nurses General Nursing

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I found this website and I figured who better to ask my questions to than people who are active in the field!? I want to do something that takes heart, challenging, rewarding, changing, good paying. The only real downside is I already have my cosmetology license and I feel like I would have wasted a year of my life if I just went and did something else. But I don't like working in a salon at all. Doing hair is fun and all, but there's nothing to it, I want to do something with more value and substance. A few things that I have been curious about...

1) How much do you like being a nurse in general? I know there's ups and downs, but at the end of the day, are you happy with what you do?

2) How do you like your job specifically? Your environment, your co-workers, your patients?

3) I have 2 children and a soon-to-be-husband. If you have a family, do you feel like you miss out on a lot of time with them? What are your hours like?

4) Are you able to support your family on your paycheck, have bills paid and food on the table?

5) How does your work make you feel about yourself? Do you feel accomplished and proud, like you're making a difference?

6) What kind of benefits are there to being a nurse? Medical/dental? Vacation time? 401K?

I had more questions and now i can't remember them! If you have any other insight to give me please do. All comments are appreciated. Thank you!

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Wow-that's a lot of questions!! Have you considered either shadowing a nurse or getting your certificate to be a nurse's aide (CNA or PCT) first to see if that's truly something you would be interested in doing before spending the time and money for nursing school?Nursing is just plain HARD! I don't think I could say it's fun really but I do like helping people feel better. The money is pretty good but you won't get rich off of it and you will earn every single penny as hard as you will work. The flexibility is great. You can work part-time and still get benefits ( all those you mentioned). I only work 2 days a week but those two days I don't really see my kids at all. I leave at 6 am and don't get home until 8 pm exhausted. You will have to work holidays and weekends. It's nice the many avenues of nursing you can try. If you get tired of an area or schedule there are always other areas and positions you can try.I don't care for all the politics of the job or the short-staffing. I also don't care for rude patients that act like they're your only patient and want you to wait on them hand and foot or the drug seekers who get angry they can't have more pain med yet. I do feel proud of myself and it makes me feel good when a patient gives me a hug or is genuinely thankful for what I've done for them. I think nursing is a great career if you go into it for the right reasons. It's harder than anyone ever expectsbut it can be very rewarding.

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Thank you so much! Yes, the FIRST thing I want to do is CNA training so I can see first hand what it's all about. Hard work doesn't scare me, in fact, it inspires me. I WANT a job that takes a lot of work, to keep me personally motivated and my mind on track. And I love the idea of always being able to further my career, that you can go from CNA to RN, BSN, CRNA, DNP, you can always do more or you can always stop. I'm a humble person and I'm in no means trying to be rich or want to do this for the money, I just need to know that I'll be able to make enough to provide for my family. Thanks for your insight!

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I went to school with a cosmetologist and many other people who had other degrees and had whole other careers for years and years and were starting fresh with nursing. I dont know if you necessarily have to get your cna to see what the field is like, you could call the nurse recruiter at a hospital and shadow a nurse for a day in a few different units and see how it is. CNAs and nurses have different roles so you may not want to take the time to go through a cna course, get a job, then take the nursing pre-req classes and apply to nursing school, then go through nursing school. CNAs take vital signs, bathe, feed, take fingerstick blood sugars. Nurses need to have good critical thinking skills, be able to priortize, multi-task, have knowledge of medications, and skills for procedures such as urinary catheter insertion, suctioning, dressing changes. I can tell you that nursing school will be very time-consuming and mentally, emotionally, and physically draining. And cost a lot. Besides going to lecture and doing 2 clinical days a week, there is a lot of reading to do. And the exams are tough and require many hours of studying. Our instructors told us to not work more than 20 hours a week, and to ask for the help and support of your family during school because you wont have time to do housework, or see your friends that often. There's a t-shirt that says "Take a break from life....enroll in nursing school". You will have to buy a lot of text books every semester and the licensing fees are something you will want to learn ahead of time and save for. You will learn all the basic cna stuff your first semester and you will be able to get your cna certificate at that point and you can get a job as a cna in the middle of nursing school, which many of my classmates did. I think it is very rewarding because patients do show their appreciation. I like that I am helping someone at the most vulnerable time in their life. I also feel rewarded by being able to use my knowledge and being able to think and be challenged, and to work independently. I am a new nurse and I am not getting paid what I thought I would, but it is so much more than I ever earned in my life and yes you get all the benefits. All that info is usually on the hospital's websites. Nursing school is tough and clinicals may not be your cup of tea because you dont get the full responsibility yet and you may not be on a unit you enjoy, but it is just a stepping stone. You will also learn what unit you like because they have different rotations. If you think you are a compassionate person, you study hard, and you are a good student, and it really interests you, you should go for it. Ive also known classmates that dropped out of school because they found that they didnt like it. I dont think there's anything wrong with that either.

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Where I'm enrolled in the RN program (Arkansas), you are required to take the CNA first. It's on of the pre-reqs

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