Nursing - a bad job?

EricJRN, MSN, RN · May 5, 2006

Try not to get too discouraged! Lots of people use this board as their place to vent, since they know there are other nurses here who will understand. It can paint a pretty negative picture, but I'm telling you that many of us love our jobs and feel pretty fortunate to be nurses!

Good luck!

AnomalousSilence · May 5, 2006

I just now joined here to ask the question. =P Many people I know or from other forums have told me this, all who have had nursing experience.

Lovely_RN, MSN · May 5, 2006

I am 30 years old and here is a list of the jobs I have held since I was 19 years old: Customer service rep for a women's catalog company, CNA in a hospital and LTC setting, receptionist for an optometry practice.

Then I graduated from college and joined the NYC Teachng Fellows :uhoh3:

taught 5th Grade for a little while. I hated that job so much but that is

for another post. After that I was a secretary for a ceo at a fortune 100 corporation, secretary for the admissions dept of a small college; then I was promoted to housing coordinator in that same college. Next, I left that college to work at another as a program coordinator for one of the graduate programs. Also, before I graduated from college I held an internship as a PR assistant.

That's a whole lotta jobs and I haven't even counted my stint at the gap or the times I worked as a supermarket store cashier.

My point? I have worked in a lot of different jobs and I have found that they all have their downside. It's true that nursing has it problems but if you think that there is any ideal job out there you are mistaken.

When I was a CNA and in college I was discouraged from becoming a nurse by people who thought the grass was greener elsewhere. I got nervous about becoming a nurse and that in combination with the long waiting list at the school I was attending made me change my major. Big mistake on my part.

Being a CNA is hard work but I found it fufilling and I always had an interesting story to tell at the end of the day. I liked the patients and 7 years after I stopped working as a CNA I can still remember a lot of them. Most of them were nice and really grateful for my help....some of them were not so nice. Same with the nurses...some loved their jobs, they were good/great nurses and some were really evil and should never have choose nursing in the first place.

Anyway, I am not saying that nursing is the best profession in the world. If it's for you then it's for you. In any field there are going to be people who love their job and people who hate it and feel strangled by it. The only way to know if something for you is to try it out and see if it fits. After trying out so many jobs I realize that being a CNA was the best fit for me so now I am on the road to being a nurse.