What Do You Love About Nursing?

[Allison007]

I am going to be starting the nursing program in January. I recently had an orientation at my school, which seemed (to me) to be devoted exclusively to informing us how difficult the program would be, and how we would have no life, and how we would suffer tremendously, etc., etc. I came home feeling pretty awful. Then I joined this wonderful site to see if anyone had any tips to offer to new students, and to look around to hear what other nurses had to say.

Wow! It seems like everyone hates their jobs/bosses/co-workers/patients. No one gets paid, everyone is exhausted, drained, burnt out, and miserable. Suddenly, nursing seems like the worst job on the planet.

I literally started crying. It seems like I am doomed to be miserable for two years in school, and subsequently for the rest of my life in my job.

SO...can anyone tell me something they actually like about nursing?

[NurseCard, ADN]

First of all, nursing school... I loved it! My classmates and I were

all pretty close, we'd go out together after clinicals sometimes...

I had my daughter in the middle of nursing school and they all

threw me a wonderful baby shower. My instructors were

mostly, pretty great. I enjoyed all of the learning. Nursing

school isn't all that bad at all. I hope you enjoy it and make

great friends along the way.

Now I've been a nurse for going on 14 years. What have I

loved about it? Well, mostly I've loved hearing this quite

often: "I could never do what you do". I'm proud to be part

of such a hard working profession, that truly, not everyone

can do. Many nursing jobs take an incredibly strong person

and I'm proud that I've endured 14 years of, several different

nursing jobs, some that were way, way more challenging

than others. Now I've landed in a job that is AMAZING.

I have coworkers that I love, and the hospital that I work

in is not very busy, which gives me more time to spend

with my patients and do the best job of caring for them

that I can!

[RNattie]

What I liked about school: I'm an extremely shy person so making friends isn't easy. Nursing school is very difficult but I was able to find a group of students I got along with great. We leaned on each other during school for support and have continued to support each other as we are working.

What I like about the job: I've only been working a few months. Some days I absolutely love the job, some days I hate it so much I want to quit and never return. However, I honestly don't think I can see myself doing anything else. The fast pace environment, the knowledge you gain, seeing someone heal and get better, the humbleness you feel when you get to be there for a family during the last moments of a person's life. It's a weird kind of thing where I both love and hate it. I've had the pleasure of shadowing different departments within my hospital. As interesting as I found many of those to be, I still can't imagine doing anything but nursing.

[southern rn]

Having medical knowledge

The title/ role "RN"; I like that distinction

The paycheck :)

I really do enjoy taking care of people and making them feel better

[lala4005]

What a great thread! I hope to be starting an accelerated BSN program over the summer, and also have been middle-of-the-night second-guessing the decision to go back to school a bit lately....my life is (hopefully) about to change in a big way in just a few months, and all of you have reminded me of why I decided to switch careers! Thank you OP and thank you to all the great comments!!!

[SHGR, MSN, RN, CNS]

One of the best things about nursing was that it made me a better person.

More mature, because I had to grow up pretty quick. Not that I was immature or bad before that, but I had to get better structure and organization.

More able to take things in stride, because no matter how bad my life seemed, I wasn't the person in the bed (I worked oncology/hospice for a long time).

Smarter, because I was always learning.

Better able to deal with all kinds of people, because I wasn't very good at it previously and I had to learn pretty quickly.

I had fabulous mentors along the way. I can honestly say that becoming and being a nurse was the best thing that I could have done. It made me grow, polished me, opened doors. Yes, it makes you cry sometimes, but it's worth it. Also, the pay is pretty good, which means that even if you don't love it, you have money to do the things you really enjoy.

[Allison007]

Thank you to everyone for all your lovely answers! It means more to me than I can say. I love reading everybody's perspectives, and I'm feeling a lot more optimistic.

I enjoy hearing about everyone's different occupations and specialties, but I am particularly interested in research. If anyone has any experience in that area and would like to share, I'd love to hear it!

Thank you again for your love and support!

[blue bag nurse]

Nursing school is NOTHING like nursing. I always make sure to tell students that. Nursing has served me well over the past 20-odd years. The flexibility is my favorite part. Don't let those negative discouragers get you down. It'll be well worth it.

[Irish76]

I am a very new nurse, I passed my NCLEX 2 months ago. In nursing school orientation we were told the same things. I worked hard in nursing school and did very well. But I still had a life and you can to. You will find a way to make time for the things that matter to you. I am a very new nurse and still love it, but some days are very hard. I work with a great group of nurses and I have learned so much from them. But, no one is appreciated by management where I work. No one. We work short staffed nearly every single day. Nursing can lose it's shiny very fast. But, I still love taking care of people. I love thinking through problems and finding solutions. I love helping people to feel better. When the days get rough I hold on to that. I also have a life away from work. If you don't have a life away from nursing you will get burnt out.

[djh123]

Well, if you're still reading the comments, here are just a few thoughts.

* Nursing school IS hard, is VERY time-consuming, and when they say you jump, you jump (6:40 am clinical? Lab time? Be at such-and-such for a psych clinical? Work on a paper at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night? It all happens). But remember, when you have a real job, you'll have a lot more free time ... so keep that in mind during the worst of nursing school.

* Yeah, there is probably stuff to gripe about in just about any type of nursing job, but there is in almost ANY job (this is my second career), and the pluses can be pretty big. At any given time, I usually have at least a handful of residents, family members and co-workers who all think very highly of me - sometimes when *I* don't think so highly of myself - but that kind of thing can make your day (or week, or month) and bring your attitude and self-confidence back up on bad days.

[LetLoveNReasonUnite]

Getting to know all different kinds of people, hearing their stories. :)

[oceanblue52]

So many valuable comments on this thread. Here is my two cents:

Nursing school is challenging. Study skills are important, you need to be able to synthesize a large amount of information, connect different topics to each other (Assessment-->Patho--->Pharm/Interventions). If you are passionate about the field and willing to work hard and grow (i.e. figure out what went wrong if you do poorly on a test/careplan and then fix it), you will do great. Even more important for both school and in life...you need to learn how to work with different personalities. You will no doubt encounter at least one professor, or a clinical instructor, or a preceptor that has a personality that rubs you wrong, or critiques you on seemingly petty stuff. Get used to it. You will have to deal with surely coworkers and providers all the time. Just smile and nod, think about why you do not like what they are saying and then figure out if it will help you in the long run. But often times in nursing school you have to grin and bear it to pass. And you might learn something! Brace yourself for this and you will be miles ahead of some of your classmates.

Echoing other's comments, I really love being a nurse. It has it's stressors, but if you have an ideal working situation you can really develop great therapeutic relationships with your patients. Nursing is very much a science and requires good assessment skills, but in the right job you can hopefully find some time to actually listen to your patients and advocate for them. Every new job will bring its challenges and you will probably hate it at times. But every job has its downfalls; I would recommend reading this board though because you will get a feel of what is an acceptable workload, what is not and you will also learn some good clinical tips along the way.

Please visit the Student Nurse board; we are happy to help you work through homework and other challenges as long as you give evidence of working through the problem. Good luck and welcome to AllNurses.com!

[Leonardo Del Toro, RN]

For a while I've been wanting to write two articles: one titled "5 reasons why you should not choose nursing" and the other "5 reasons why you should become a nurse" The interesting thing however is that the 5 reasons you should and the 5 reasons you shouldn't are exactly the same but just interpreted differently. Confused yet?

In other words: all that is rough, annoying, dangerous, boring, exhausting; are what changes you into a brave, capable, lovable, ego less, fast, efficient, though skin person.

It is up to you. Are you up to the challenge?