Do you have family members who are nurses?

[Purple_Scrubs]

I am curious how many of us have close family members (parent, grandparent especially) who are nurses, and whether or not this inspired you in your career choice.

I will answer for myself...my mom is a nurse, as was my great-grandmother and an aunt. I cannot say that this inspired me to go into nursing, however. My mom was in management by the time I was old enough to really understand what she did for a living, and I knew 100% that I did NOT want to follow in those footsteps! I was inspired to consider nursing as a second career after my husband was hospitalized and subsequently required surgery.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

my family is lousy with engineers and a few lawyers thrown in, but i was the only one ever interested in the biological sciences. my late dad's wife was a scrub tech in the or forty years ago, but to hear her tell it, she's the second coming of debakey..

[RanieRN, MSN, RN]

My maternal grandmother, 2 aunts, and an uncle were/are nurses. My father and I went through nursing school together, and my sister graduated from the same program a few years after we did.

According to my mother, I announced my decision to become a nurse when I was 4.

[Nascar nurse, ASN, RN]

No family (or family friend) influence. I was the first on either side of my family to attend college. I also began saying I was going to be a nurse at the age of 5. Now I find that really strange...where does a 5 year old get such an idea when there is no one influencing them.

My daughter starts college in the fall. She strongly wants to do something medical but has no desire to "touch sick people"!

[GitanoRN, BSN, MSN, RN]

not influenced by any family or friend in my case

[GitanoRN, BSN, MSN, RN]

my daughter starts college in the fall. she strongly wants to do something medical but has no desire to "touch sick people"!

my best to your daughter, & congrats to you for her desire to advance her education, and she doesn't have to worry there are so many branches in the medical field where she would never touch physically a pt.; only indirectly for instance via paper or computer

[FLmomof5]

Mom is a retired nurse (35 yrs), Sis is a nurse, Brother is a nurse and my daughter is in nursing school (after a few years of being a combat medic).

I chose nursing because it required the shortest amount of retraining time for the most amount of money AND most importantly, you would NOT have your job sent to India. So, no, it was not a 'calling' for me.

[bananafish]

My grandmother was a WWII nurse and just generally an awesome lady. My mom has been a nurse since the mid-70s. I would say they influenced me, but in a kind of roundabout way. At first, I didn't want to be anything like my mother, so I went to college and got a degree in creative writing. I wasn't creative enough to make a career out of that though, so I just kind of bounced around jobs for a few years before realizing that nursing would be a decent-paying career and that my mother, even though she doesn't love everything about her job, is still passionate about her work and proud of what she does. I figured any profession you can still feel strongly about after almost 40 years was probably worth looking into. Having her support (and someone to vent to who knows exactly what I'm going though) while in nursing school and now as a new nurse has been incredibly helpful.

I'm kind of glad I didn't go straight into nursing though. I don't think I could have handled it at 22. I'm happy that I was able to learn poise and professionalism in lower-stakes environments first. So, from specifically not wanting to be a nurse to wanting exactly that because of my mom, yeah, she was a big, big influence.

[movingforward12]

Im the first nurse in my family. Actually, the first one to work in a healthcare field.

[dudette10, MSN, RN]

My stepmother became an RN in the late 1940s, but she stopped practicing after she got what she really wanted by going to nursing school: an MD to marry.

My ex-SIL is a nurse, and so are two of my cousins, but one no longer practices. The most represented profession in my family is being a policeman, with career military becoming a close second. Neither of the latter have ever appealed to me.

[akanini, MSN, RN]

My mom and grandmother (her mom).

[skiellach]

I started nursing school after high school in 1965, but was forced to leave, due to illness. I got a job, married, had children, and stayed home for 10 years. Sadly, I divorced, but later found my soul mate, who encouraged me to return to school to become a nurse. He sacrificed for me, working one full-time job, and two part-time jobs so that I could quit work and finish my studies to become an RN. He did all of this while we had 3 children in college full-time!!

My daughter, who originally wanted to become an accountant, changed her major in college to nursing, not because of me, but because of a college friend. Regardless of how this happened, I'm so proud of her for choosing the most wonderful and rewarding career there is. Perseverance paid off for both of us and, despite the many negatives, we LOVE out jobs!!

[Fyreflie]

My grandmother was an NA for years and years and then it skipped a generation--all four if her kids are musicians! I started Nursing School at 24 after traveling for four years, mostly affected I think by a car accident in which my youngest sister was badly injured and poorly treated. She went into organ failure after shattering her spleen, breaking her ribs and rupturing her stomach. The RN working the ICU that night was an inexperienced float from another floor because they were short staffed and it was my Mom who alerted the doc. After they were Lear jetted to the nearest children's hospital they opened her up again and then she spent almost a week in the PICU and another five weeks in the hospital. She developed a blood yeast infection that had to be treated with Amphoteracin and the weekend that she started they forgot to do her lytes for three days--so her drop foot turned into nerve damage and contractures and after all the other crazy stuff it took her over a year to walk again. When we brought her home she was so badly contractured in her knees that she couldn't sit in a chair.

Phew. Needless to say, life altering for all of us! My mother and next sister (I'm the oldest of four) became volunteer EMS in the States when they moved down. I'm an RN, sis #3 is an RN and my miracle sister (just turned 22 and doing great--but still can't put her heels on the floor and has bladder problems from the spine injury that got missed) found out yesterday that she's been accepted to the nursing program as well!