what age did you decide to become a nurse

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What age**

If you were a career changer what did you do before?

27. I worked as an admin assistant prior to and during nursing school after completing my first bachelor's degree.

I realized I wanted to be a nurse after spending lots of time in the hospital with my great aunt after she suffered a fall and a brain bleed. I was feeling a little directionless at the time and realized that I would probably enjoy nursing. Thus far, I've been happy with my decision.

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Specializes in LTC, med/surg, hospice.

19yo. Before I was going to simply major in biology and teach...I think.

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Specializes in PACU.

32. I was doing contract jobs for internet marketing for many years from home as my kids got older. Now they are in middle school and I'm on my first year of school towards my nursing career! I always wanted to be a doctor, so nursing seemed like next best thing at my age. :)

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I left a non-profit outreach program coordinator position at 39 for nursing as a second career. I'd been teaching health/wellness and teen pregnancy prevention in several school systems throughout our metro area, and realized that I was being called to it after hundreds of conversations with high school students. My teaching background has helped with patient education, but was a drawback for me in nursing school- it was a 180 degree change as a nursing student. It was much more difficult than I had ever imagined.

Now, patient education is my focus and primary responsibility- I adore it!

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Specializes in L&D, infusion, urology.

34.

My resume prior to nursing is very long. Most significantly, I was in retail management and was a hospital corpsman in the Navy.

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Specializes in Critical Care; Recovery.

27. I had worked customer service at a call center for 7 years before and various other jobs before that.

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17. I needed to declare a career goal on an competition application, and my sister who was finishing nursing school at the time strongly encouraged me to choose nursing. It had nothing to do with wanting to be a nurse and all to do with accepting advice to make a sensible decision.

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Specializes in Critical Care.

I first thought about it as a teen, but didn't pursue it immediately. Instead I became a secretary taking business and secretarial training in high school. Came from a working class family and didn't feel college was for me. Worked as a secretary for a couple years, it was low paying and boring and than started college part time after visiting friends in college who were having fun. College seemed fun and exciting to explore any class you wanted. I wandered for several years working part-time and taking classes. Then I made the decision to go into nursing school after realizing a liberal arts degree was not going to get me a better job than a secretary and that was too little to live on, plus I wanted to use my brain! I was 25 when I made that decision and one semester away from getting a BA degree. Up to this point I had paid as I went and not taken out student loans. I didn't finish the BA degree because I thought it would keep me from getting financial aid for nursing school. After considering several schools I found a 2 year ADN program at a private non profit college and enrolled and was accepted into classes immediately, other schools had a wait list or would take much longer. Graduated at 28 and got a job right out of school at a time when they said it was hard to get a job as a nurse. Nursing seems to go thru periods of shortage and gluts with layoffs. I think it would be much harder to find a job as a new grad today than it was when I graduated.

But I'm glad I didn't become a nurse right out of high school. I'm glad I had time to work other jobs and enjoy school for fun and not just hard work. Also I'm glad I missed the beginning of the AIDS crisis when so much was unknown about how it spread. There was a time when nurses didn't even use gloves to care for patients. I'm glad I missed that too. I had a coworker who got Hep C working as a nurse because of this and ended up being on antivirals for a year to treat it!

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I was going to school mid eighties when universal precautions was developed. I had a short period of giving injections and starting IVs without gloves. We had been wearing them for anything messy but had to learn to perform those skills with gloves, it was a big change.

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28, in my first semester of pre-reqs now. I was an intelligence analyst up until about 6 months ago.

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Specializes in Emergency room, Neurosurgery ICU.

I knew I wanted to be an RN when I was 14... went into college after HS, then "life" happened, (married, kids, divorce...) I was a STNA for a long time in between, a stay-at-home mum, a HHA, and an Assistant Funeral Director for almost 2 years. I finally went back to college at 31 and got my ADN at 34.

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I grew up with nursing, my father has been a bed side RN for 38 years, so I pretty much always wanted to go into the field. I had I guess what you would call a rebellious period right out of highschool and totally went the other way and got a B.A. in English Lit and Tech Theatre, and spent most of my 20s working all over the country doing profesional lighting, set design, and sound for live preformance. Then I met my future wife, and right away being on the road 10 months out of the year no longer interested me so at 27 yrs old I went back to school and got my R.N. Funny how life takes you in a great big circle to get back to where you belong sometimes. Most people think that my change from the arts to nursing was a big jump but not really. I use many of the same skills in nursing as I did in Theatre, thinking quickly on my feet, making choices and making the show go on no matter what.

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