Being an ugly nurse

[mofomeat]

Hi folks. My questions in this thread are actually more serious than they'll seem...

We've discussed at length here how awesome it is to be a young, hot nurse. Well, how about if you're old and ugly? The first strike against me is I'm male. The second strike is I'm going to be past 40 by time I finish Nursing school. My hair is thinning a little and I've got a mild case of rosacea. I'm somewhat overweight, but I've also got a condition known as Diastasis Recti which makes it look like I have a beer gut. I never was a cute little kid to start with and never got to be "young and hot" like everyone else. Basically, I'm at tops a step up from your standard Level 4 bridge troll. In real life, if I'm too nice to people or too eager to help them with anything (an innate flaw of my personality) it somehow translates to "creepy" instead of "kind". This disqualifies me from L&D and Ped for sure, but I'm fine with that.

When a classmate of mine tells people he is going into nursing, the responses he gets are usually "*swoon* nothing like a hot male nurse!". When I tell people, I usually get stuff like "You'll be useful for all the heavy lifting and cleaning up".

Surely some of you Studly Guys and Lovely Ladies have had to work alongside someone who looks like they stepped out of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene before (and I don't mean that in the cool way). Even if the ugly nurse is reasonably intelligent, competent, fairly personable with a great sense of humor and doesn't smell bad, would their dodgy appearance make them more prone to:

1) Discipline for mistakes.

2) Lateral violence.

3) Getting a bedpan dumped in their locker

4) Patients being 'creeped out' in the presence of an ugly old man

5) Jealousy from co-workers (see Mos Eisley comment above)

6) Getting hired in the first place

7) ???

I'm not becoming a nurse to go hit on all the hot young female nurses (as my friends seem to believe) so I'm not overly worried about dating prospects. It's a job, it's a career and I'm driven to help people.

The people I work with now love the crap out of me because I'm good at what I do, I'm good at understanding what THEY do, I'm good at getting everyone and everything to work together and I make the work environment fun and enjoyable with humor and good cheer. However, we're all a bunch of computer/Star Wars/Lego/DnD geeks and we don't work with the public a whole helluva lot.

But nobody goes to a hospital to see ugly people, right? Should I just pack it in and join the circus instead?

[bezany]

You wrote the solution right in the paragraph: "The people I work with now love the crap out of me because I'm good at what I do, I'm good at understanding what THEY do, I'm good at getting everyone and everything to work together and I make the work environment fun and enjoyable with humor and good cheer." Patients dont go to the hospital to see pretty people either! Find a feather and beat yourself black and blue with it, then stop beating yourself up with your harsh criticism. Negative self-talk is destructive and hurtful. Imagine if a friend said the things about you or someone else that you say about yourself!!! You would be angry, hurt, and resentful. I work on treating myself just as good as I treat others, I believe that I am just as important to others as they are to me. Respect yourself and others will respect you, love yourself and others will love you, I promise. As far as the age thing goes, the nursing workforce is aging, you will probably be one of the young ones! Oh by the way, I resent that circus reference, I grew up in the circus, and I dont remember a single troll during my years under the big top!

[mapelbean]

Well I dont know where to start. You said that you will be past 40 by the time you graduate. I am 41 years old and I just graduated and passed my boards. We have a student in our class that was 60 years old and very competent. Well anyways I was not any means the prettiest student nurse in the class and I am very over weight. During clinicals the patients assigned to me didnt care what I looked like they cared that I was a competent student nurse. They cared if I was compasionate, listened to there needs, and provided excellent care (with the guidance of my instructor). I had the good fortune of a having serveral of my assigned patients resquest me as there student nurse again and gave me awesome reports about me to the facility we were learning in. So dont get so down on your self its not about what you look like its about caring for the patients. Nursing school is tough enough already dont make it harder than it already is by worrying about looks and age.

[Kashia, ASN, LVN]

When I first read the heading of your post , I thought it would be concerning the heart of a nurse, perhaps a mean spirited nurse

or other behavioral control issues agendas. Ha ha

Surprised was I to read you refer to your outer appearance, or actually how you perceive yourself.

If I was a patient, the most important thing to me would be how a nurse cared for me, how well they performed nursing duties, knowledgeable, if they were clean and washed their hands...

but especially especially how emphatic they were to my situation of being in a place

I know not, fearful of what lies ahead for me, perhaps in pain.....(aside from the technical professional) aspects of your job, how you relate to their humanness and venerability and advocate for them in a medical system ( sometimes confusing or gone astray)

is the most important number one thing.

[tachybradyRN]

if i were your coworker, i would be more than happy to work with you regardless of how you look as long as you were a respectable man and a hard worker.

if i were your patient, i would not give a rat's ass what you looked like as long as you took good care of me in my time of illness.

end of story.

with love from another RN who thinks you're overthinking this :)

[aureliarye]

Wait, do I have to be young and good looking to be a Nurse? I'm a 52 year old lady in my 2nd semester of Nursing School. Should I change careers again? Maybe an underwear model?

[yginay]

Surely some of you Studly Guys and Lovely Ladies have had to work alongside someone who looks like they stepped out of the Mos Eisley Cantina scene before (and I don't mean that in the cool way). "

That just made me aspirate my drink while laughing so hard!

I'd work with you any day, sense of humor and confidence rather than cockiness trumps all in my opinion. BTW I am also 40+, > than size 6, minimal makeup etc. but I doubt people look at me and say I fell from the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down

[Tarabara]

Seriously, beauty and youth really don't count for much with patients. They want someone who is friendly, professional, and confident. They are scared, they feel rotten, they are out of their element, and they aren't looking too hot themselves. They don't care about your looks, just about how you take care of them.

This^

Plus, there are some advantages to being male and a bit older. I am 23 and sometimes I think others dont take me seriously because I'm young, which can be frustrating.

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

Y'all, 56 answers to the OP and I estimate 99.9% were sincere. I read every one and I am so proud of the responses. I'm pretty much older, heavier, grey haired and happy as a clam to claim 38 years as an RN. To the OP, square up those shoulders, look in the mirror and see a N*U*R*S*E and go get'em and make us happy to consider you as a member of the "hardest job you will ever LOVE!"

[annieolpn]

Contrary to popular belief, the only thing patients are worried about in their nurse is that they are competent, friendly and can make them feel better. Your looks will have VERY little to do with your abilities as a nurse. I am 43 years old, 40 pounds overweight conservatively and missing a couple of teeth. It does not impede my abiliities to do my job and do it well. You are not going into this to make the cover of nurse vogue. In my honest opinion, you will do very well as a nurse because you said it, you are driven to help people...it sounds to me that you have some confidence issues which is completely understandable. I am willing to listen, go to my profile for my email. Friend me in FB...you will be just fine. Don't pack it in and don't sell yourself short...if you have the heart and sense of humor you day you do, use it to your advantage. Your looks will not keep you from getting hired...trust me it doesn't work that way. You will find your niche...

[BuckeyeGirlRN]

If I were your patient I would be much more concerned with the care you provide, besides would you care if your patient was so called ugly? I have gotten some funny looks when I walked into a room,I wear bilateral hearing aides and was diagnosed with a mild form of Treacher Collins Syndrome (if you don't know what that is....look it up). That's just my outer shell and has nothing to do with the real me and my ability as a nurse. I'm a damn good nurse and I give good patient care....at the end of the day that's all that matters to me. If a patient wants pretty...he ain't getting it from me, but if I'm their nurse they can be sure they will get quality care.

[NurseOnAMotorcycle, ASN, RN]

It's true, looking cute gets you more. There have been a ton of studies on it. I think that OP's frustration is valid.

[joanna73, BSN, RN]

You're probably too critical of yourself (aren't we all?), but seriously, all I'm concerned about with respect to any health care provider is this: competence, compassion, and politeness. Anything else, I could care less. While we are an image conscious society, most people could care less about the looks of their health care provider, as long as he/she is clean and professional. Don't sweat it :)