Nursing school has made me not like nursing

Nurses General Nursing

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Hello to anyone reading this,

So im going into my last semester of my bsn program and while everyone is getting excited, im not. Nursing school has slowly drained my passion and excitement for nursing. It was fun at first but somewhere along the way I began to realize that i no longer had any interest in it, it just didnt/doesnt excite me anymore. The constant stress of having to perform well, the desire to continually learn new material ( which i dont have), and just the overall demandingness of the job. Now im no stranger to putting in work, i am former military and i keep a high gpa above 3.5. Its just the passion, its gone. Anyway, i guess the question im getting at here is what non-nursing job can you do with a bsn? Ive thought about leaving school, but im 30 and married, i may not like my degree but i know i at least need to finish one. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

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Specializes in Oncology.

You can't possibly know if you like nursing. You haven't tried nursing yet. You've tried being a nursing student, which is a different world from being a nurse. Further, being a nurse isn't one job. It's a diverse profession where I truly believe most people can find a niche if they keep trying.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

Nursing school for me, especially my first go round in the LPN program, was horrid and burned me out but although the nursing profession's silliness continues to make me raise my eyebrows on a regular basis I have loved being a nurse. Try to find need to find your niche before throwing in the towel. Did any specialty or particular unit in clinical spark your interest?

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There's a million things you can do with a bsn and some experience. No experience? Not so much. You're 30, married, and former military... I'm sure you've learned the lesson of sucking it up and just doing what you have to do. Jobs require competence, not passion. Get some experience and you can find your own niche.

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Specializes in public health, women's health, reproductive health.

By the end of my nursing program, I was pretty exhausted. Honestly, I hated nursing school. What's worse is that, in some important ways, it didn't prepare me for being a nurse. I found working as a nurse to be totally different than school. I say that in a good way and a bad way. The good is that once you get experience, you can change your specialty and do different kinds of nursing and find your niche. As a previous poster wrote, nursing is a broad field, fortunately. You don't, for instance, have to be a hospital bedside nurse. You might want to try working in the profession before writing it off. Though, I can relate to how you feel right now!

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

Nursing school is NOT nursing. The real learning and practice of nursing begins after graduation.

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School does suck, especially when you're pretty sure you'll never ever work in a particular specialty (like OB), but have to study it anyway. When you land a nursing position, it is true that you'll have to undergo more training and you may need to brush up on some information on your off time, but your learning is going to be more focused, and you won't have to put in nearly as many hours towards education as you had to in school. There are also so many different nursing specialties--I would be willing to bet that there's something out there that will make you happy.

If nursing truly isn't for you, there's absolutely no problem with moving on to something else. But I can't help but think that after going through something like nursing school for this long, it might be worth it to at least give the actual job a try.

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Yeah, I agree with the previous posters. You can't possibly know if you like nursing yet. Nursing school is nothing like actual nursing. Give it a chance - you've worked too hard. There are so many different areas and specialities you can go into. What are you interested in?

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Nursing school can be pretty awful depending on the clinical instructors you have and classmates surrounding you. Nursing is very different from school though. Why did you choose nursing?

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It is a cliche' but nursing school is harder than nursing. Give nursing a chance. Once you are on your unit with your friends/colleagues and feeling proprietary about your patients, feeling a sense of accomplishment, and "only" working 3 twelves a week (as opposed to the 24/7 demands of a nursing student) you may feel differently. Worse case scenario: you have a very good job.

If bedside care is not for you, I graduated with people who went right into case management, public health, infomatics, research study management, wound care, diabetes education...

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Specializes in PICU.

I echo what others have said that nursing school is not like nursing at all. Most of nursing school is all adults and inpatient care. For me, I had no interest in taking care of adults. Maybe try to go into a specialty that isn't adult med/surg and see what you think. As for other jobs, there's tons of case manager jobs, they pay well, you still work in a hospital but no night shift and you aren't working as a nurse. That's just 1 option. Good luck in finding something that inspires you for work.

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Although I agree with the PP's advice, I'd add an important caveat.

You state that the parts of nursing you don't like are the stress of having to perform well and constantly learning (which to me sounds like you're burnt out from being in nursing school). During your first couple of years as a new grad nurse, these two things will probably continue to be major stressors. You'll have to perform well for your preceptor/managers on orientation, and you'll experience a steep learning curve; like nursing school, the new grad orientation process is demanding.

However, once you get past that initial, challenging first year or so, it gets way easier. You aren't stressed about your 'performance' because the skills, assessments, and interventions you perform become second nature. Hopefully you will continue to learn via continuing ed and seeing new cases, but you won't feel like you're swamped with new information (vs. how you probably felt in nursing school when everything was new). If you hang in there through the stress of being a new grad, you'll eventually feel comfortable with your performance and knowledge base. Also, unlike in nursing school clinicals and new grad orientation, as an independent nurse you won't constantly have a supervisor standing over you critiquing your every move.

IMHO, working in a job where you aren't expected to perform well and you don't learn/grow sounds terribly boring and unsatisfying.

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