As bad as they say??

[lancerRN2b]

Is nursing as bad as others say it is? I just got through reading a thread about nurses saying that they would not reccommend the field. Either too much stress, too much dirty work, and unappreciated by coworkers. Is this true for an RN? Also many saying that the money is not up to par either. Is the salary for RNs overstated by salary.com?? I understand that entry-level pay would not be great money, but I would expect to start making more after 2-3 years of experience. With this experience does the stress/pressures ease up a bit? Any opinions and suggestions are appreciated as I am trying to find out if this is right for me or not.

[timster1984]

This has actually reminded me to ask this question now that I'm reading over this thread. It sounds like it won't be nearly as bad as shell shock as it might be in other states since I live in California, but if I did decide to do nursing, how bad are the unappealing parts of the job? Until I have an acceptance letter from a medical school, nursing is going to be an option for me since one way or another I want to be doing health care, and I would like to know what I'd be getting into if I did decide to go that route.

I was already aware of the patient ratio law in California because my EMT friend in southern california mentioned that tonight, so it sounds like I won't have to deal with nightmare-ish understaffing, but I'm wondering what other negative aspects of the job a California nurse would have to deal with? I'm not worried about pay since either way it's going to be good enough, and I'm not worried about underappreciation or lack of respect since the latter I would refuse to let people trample over and the former...well, show me a job where you /are/ shown appreciation and I'll buy you a drink. In my experience, every job rewards idiocy and incompetence and ignores excellence so underappreciation is a myth in my opinion.

The main thing I'm wondering about is specifically the stuff that isn't appealing, such as dealing with bodily fluids, etc....I've read plenty about the positive aspects and the negative aspects but I've seen people go into detail about the positive aspects but not the negative, so I'm curious about the negatives in more detail because it's always best to plan for the worst and hope for the best instead of vise versa. :)