does anyone regret this career?

Nurses General Nursing

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just curious.

I regret it every single day. I had good intentions when I started, and I wasn't idealistic either. But it is a FAR worse job than I imagined. I feel like the life has been beaten out of me.

I consider myself a good nurse, and I do give it my all for patients when I'm at work. But I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this.

Just wanted to know if I was alone. My family and friends don't seem to understand.

I do have fleeting moments when I regret my career choice. I enjoy what I do as a nurse; I don't necessarily like how I am perceived as a nurse. It is a humbling profession, and I struggle with my pride. I crave autonomy & respect, and nurses don't always get either of them. Here's what I'm trying to say, stated more eloquently: https://allnurses.com/nurse-colleague-patient/nurses-oppression-can-778005.html

Have you worked for many other organizations? One thing I realized is it may not be nursing, but the environment in which I am practicing nursing that isn't a good fit. I think organizational culture really matters when it comes to job satisfaction.

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Cantdoit, you are not alone. I began to regret going into nursing when I realized a hospital is a business, and has to be run as such. That didn't leave a lot of time for me to really interact with my patients the way I wanted to. At times, patient care with minimal staffing has been downright dangerous. As I got older that really began to bother me. While it has been very difficult to drag myself into work at times, and the rewards for all we do are growing less frequent, I can still say there is still nothing else I would rather do. I just had to find another area to do it in! If you really believe you would be better off doing something else, start looking at other options. In this job market, it may be tougher and it certainly won't happen overnight. But life really is too short to stay miserable when you can do something to change it. Sometimes just knowing you have a way out makes things more tolerable. Hang in there!

I went into case management after a work injury. I had been at the bedside for 12 yrs, and was just about to leave nursing completely when someone was willing to give me a chance, without a 4 yr degree. Case management is very challenging and rewarding in it's own way. I am going back for my BSN now, it's a matter of keeping myself marketable.

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Although I do not regret this career (yet), I'll readily admit that my personality is not compatible with nursing.

I am an introvert who does not particularly like meeting new people, even though I put on the acting game for the sake of my patients. In addition, I am not the type who seeks validation or deeply desires to 'be needed' by others. I also do not have a yearning to help people. In a nutshell, I am a self-centered person with no sense of altruism.

I am you, except that I am an extrovert who enjoys meeting new people.

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.

While I may not be the cookie cutter, deeply compassioante, empathetic nurse who loves every pt, I love what I do and I dont regret it.

There are days where I wish I had a job with far less responsibility, where everyone isnt mad at you from the get go and people actually appreciate what you do, but it will happen soon enough.

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It seems to me nursing is so broad a profession, that one could always find some sort of job somewhere he liked. Especially if you're an RN. Hospitals, LTC, doctors offices, home care, school nursing. Each one is like having a completely different job. How many other careers offer such variety? Just keep looking until you find the right fit.

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

The pragmatic side of me assumes that most people have regrets about their life choices and their careers. I honestly don't know how many people can truly say that they absolutely love their job. Do I regret not being able to live to work or that I'm working to live in a career with depressed, compressed wages and with little room for lateral advancement without more schooling?

I watch my husband drag himself to work every day in a career that should, theoretically, suit his personality and intelligence mindset. Of course, he has those little perks of being a salaried employee who can take off a day, or go home early, or take a long lunch. I get PTO but my hospital uses a punitive point system for those who call in sick and our unit is so chronically short staffed that a PTO day scheduled three months in advance will get denied.

I'm also pretty highly introverted. I don't mind - even prefer, usually - the quick, superficial short-term relationships that I have with my patients. But I have my on days and my off days; on my off days, the work of polite conversation can be more exhausting than the physical exertion of caring for a dozen bed-bound patients with cdiff. But I do genuinely enjoy caring for people, and while I know my nursing skills suffer in other departments, I am not lacking in compassion.

So I'm okay with the job, at least right now. Or at least okay with my level of regret because I don't think it differs much from the rest of the general population? I had quite a few opportunities open to me before nursing school. I was accepted into DVM school and probably could have parlayed my undergrad experience into getting accepted into medical school; or, alternatively, I fell in love with micro and probably could have kept the grades up to get into a grad/post-grad with that. But would I have been any happier with any of those other career paths? Am I just looking for something that simply isn't possible unless I were to be independently wealthy?

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Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.
It seems to me nursing is so broad a profession, that one could always find some sort of job somewhere he liked. Especially if you're an RN. Hospitals, LTC, doctors offices, home care, school nursing. Each one is like having a completely different job. How many other careers offer such variety? Just keep looking until you find the right fit.

No offense (lol, I know, right? gonna be offensive) but I don't know whether I should find these sorts of replies to be disingenuous or whether I simply live in the wrong part of the country r/t horizontal transferring in nursing but to keep looking until you find a good fit is laughably absurd, esp. as a RN.

There just aren't jobs in many of the areas that you specified anymore. School budget cuts, anyone? Clinics trading out RNs and even LPNs for MAs who can be paid minimum wage.

Obviously, not saying that there aren't other options, but there is often a minimum debt to be paid of bedside nursing time and probably 200 other applicants applying to the same infection control or informatics or research position.

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No offense (lol, I know, right? gonna be offensive) but I don't know whether I should find these sorts of replies to be disingenuous or whether I simply live in the wrong part of the country r/t horizontal transferring in nursing but to keep looking until you find a good fit is laughably absurd, esp. as a RN. There just aren't jobs in many of the areas that you specified anymore. School budget cuts, anyone? Clinics trading out RNs andeven LPNs for MAs who can be paid minimum wage.Obviously, not saying that there aren't other options, but there is often a minimum debt to be paid of bedside nursing time and probably 200 other applicants applying to thesame infection control or informatics or research position.
I guess I'm just lucky to live in a part of the country where it's relatively easy to find a wider variety of nursing jobs. In my fairly short nursing career, I've done corrections, LTC and acute care. And this as a LPN. I have had job offers in dialysis and substance abuse clinics. School nursing is fairly easy to come by for LPNs, too. Several of my classmates ended up as school nurses. Though I hear the pay sucks. Ditto for clinic nursing. The jobs are there in clinics and urgent care, but the pay is terrible. (at least around here)
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Specializes in Med Surg, PCU, Travel.
thanks for the replies. I've been doing this for about a year and a half (not long, but I'm not brand new either). And I have tried changing specialties and hospitals, but things just went from terrible to even more terrible. I've heard there are better jobs out there, but they aren't hiring. And I don't have enough experience to get away from acute care yet.

I'm so tired all the time. I am literally running all shift long, trying to be in 3 places at once. And management just says "do more!" I can't even go to the bathroom without having 3 missed calls and then having everyone ask "is your phone working?!" the second I get out. I'm so sick of trying to mediate arrogant doctors, needy/ridiculous family members, and back-stabbing coworkers.

I'm trying, I really am. But I'm tired of being treated like this day after day. How is this considered a profession?

A job that I hate I normally leave it right away...there was one job I worked at for like 4 days, so it sound to me that you got a bit left in you. Sounds like I got a tough future ahead of me, and I really hope I like it. 1.5 years is not really long in any profession, but reading your post it sounds like you do like being a nurse, you just dont like the circumstances which are around you. My sister felt the same way, but stuck through the hard times, now at 35yo and several years later, she found that long term care was for her, and she makes a great living doing. Give yourself more time to find the area you will love. On your days off add activities that counters your high stress so you can feel balanced. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me in at job is reminding myself, to not do it for my managers, not for my coworkers, not for my customers and not even for my family, just do it for God and he will get you through this time and always.

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Thirty years here... I ... FEEL your pain. The "expectations " of the nurse.. are now the expectations of the corporation that run the facility.

We are no longer caregivers.. we are pawns in the health care delivery system.

For a long time now, I have tried to express the "challenges" of nursing ... to family and friends.

Hang THAT up.

They are indoctrinated to believe that nurses are caregivers... and we are here to serve our patients.

We now, serve the corporation.

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I won't say that I regret going into nursing, but I'm definitely not happy with where I am in my career. I've been a nurse for 3 years now. My first year of nursing was spent just trying to find a job. I finally found a job working nights on a very busy med-surg floor. Not my dream job but I was very thankful for it. I stayed there 2 years, learned alot along the way, but got very burned out with it. I recently started a new job, at a new hospital, working weekend days on a medical floor. I thought maybe a change of scenery would do me good, but 2 weeks in and already I'm not liking it (which I hate saying because I feel like I'm being ungrateful). My new job, so far, is really not all that bad (no job is perfect), but I'm just not happy. My true passion is to work with kids. I would love to work NICU or peds but in my area those jobs are extremely hard to come by, especially when you only have med-surg experience. It's so easy to become unmotivated when you're not happy, but I'm glad to see I'm not alone.

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There are so many days I feel the same way. If I could find a job making the kind of money I do right now, I'd get out of nursing in a heartbeat and never look back. At the same time, I know I feel that way because my workplace is horrible. I don't mind taking care of patients, but watching the constant backstabbing that my coworkers do every single day, plus the fact that I can see management is way more interested in numbers than safe patient care really drains me. Sure, a different job would fix that, but it's hard to find a job when there aren't very many out there, and the ones that are, I send a resume and never hear anything back.

Have you ever considered changing your specialty? Maybe you would have better luck if you found an area you enjoyed more.

I feel the same way...I don't regret nursing I regret the catty backstabbing that goes on. I have a clinical coordinator that has a great deal of pressure on her. Top that off with problems in her life, she takes it out on the staff. I got a 20min lecture one morning as soon as I got in about something that was the secretary's fault( and I don't even like saying that because she it new too and people make mistakes, this was about scheduling a patient on a day when her doc isn't in the office. I sent out resumes for case managing but they didn't hire me. As it is the position I have now is per diem no benefits. With MS, Crohns, thyroid cancer, hypoparathyroidism, I need health insurance. I am paying $ 600 /month for COBRA from my last job. :(

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