Career switch coming??? Any advice

Nurses Career Support

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Hello and thank you to all who take time to answer. This is a great forum. I am 36 years old and considering going back to school BSN. I do not have a degree so have to start with just a few previously earned community college credits. My concerns are 1) is there a way to find a program that has actual availability. Most everything I have heard is good luck getting into a program! You can go all the way thru pre req courses and then not get accepted into nursing school 2) i'm hearing that the paperwork is driving many nurses out of the field. can someone shed some light on this? Like is it just the normal fact of life that you do paperwork and people blow this out of proportion? 3) I hear about all these shortages and the national nurses board says job openings for first year students are easy to find and pay an average of 44k per year. Is this accurate?

Any help, advice, warnings and opinions are welcome. You can email me directly if you prefer not to leave a message here. Thank you

Horselady,

Welcome to the site. I can tell that you're putting a lot of thought into this possible change of direction. Here are some opinions:

1) Yes, that's a problem and it requires a lot of persistence in some cases to be accepted into a program. Part of the issue is that there is a shortage of nursing faculty (with the qualifications for teaching, nurses can often make more money in other facets of nursing).

2) At least in my experience, it's blown out of proportion. Good, thorough charting is necessary for numerous reasons, but in my job, I still feel like my primary job is patient care, not pushing paper.

3) Salary and shortage/no shortage will vary widely by your location. Check www.salary.com to find out what nurses are averaging in your area.

Good luck with whichever path you take.

Specializes in cardiac/critical care/ informatics.

Hello the waiting list for schools vary from location to location. Paperwork is a pain, but it is like anything else it is what you make of it. Good Luck

You will get lots of good stuff from this site.

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