leaving nursing to become a speech therapist

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so i've been a nurse for 5 years and i'm strongly thinking about leaving nursing and becoming a speech pathologist. there are many reasons but i was wondering if any one has done this or has any thoughts. thanks!

I am thing of doing the same but what are your reasons?

Hi! I'm thinking of becoming a speech pathologist also.

Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

My sister left teaching to become an SLP and couldn't be happier. She finds she is doing more "good" and making more of a difference as a pediatric SLP than she ever did as an elementary inclusion/special ed teacher. Right now she is working with brain injured (traumatic or acquired (tumor, stroke, etc) children regain feeding & language skills.

I haven't known anyone who's done this, but I will say that all the SLPs I have known over the years seemed a lot happier being SLPs than most of the nurses I've known have been happy about being nurses ...

good plan as long as you're not planning on ever working for the public school system. the bad news is that this is where over half of the jobs are. The good news is, there are other possibilities - adult practice settings (SNF, SAR, hospital-based), as well as home health and private peds clinics.

(public school SLP: ridiculously low pay - in many states SLPs are paid on the same scale as teachers, which obviously isn't very good, no limit to the amount of students admins will dump on your caseload, being guilt-tripped into picking up students who don't actually need speech therapy or have language deficits because the school gets additional $$$ for every kid who gets special services, IEP meetings for the 50-60 kids on your caseload means working till midnight at home preparing IEP reports at home for no extra pay and attending IEP meetings-again for no extra pay...)

source: my cousin and several of my co-workers are SLPs with school-based experience.

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