Changing professions after age 50

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hello has anyone ( or knows someone) changed professions after age 50? Quit nursing , studied some other subject/degree?

Im curious, because I need out, but am afraid no one will hire me after age 50 , no matter what new degree I get.

Anyone know of any professions that pay like nursing?

Thanks

Specializes in Critical Care.
I guess school might still be an option- I still have to work 20 more years anyhow.Im sure other old adults have had to go back to school at this age.

If you do go back to school look into your local community college for tech training for specific jobs such as ultrasound tech which makes as much or better than nursing. Try not to take out student loans if you do because it is too risky you cannot declare bankruptcy and they will even garnish your social security if need be to get the money back! It would be better to take out a home equity line of credit and even consider a 0% interest credit card before student loans. If you have good credit you should be able to have access to large amount of money on credit cards. The idea is not to max them out but to use them carefully while keeping your debt ratio low to maintain a high credit score.

For what its worth I understand how you feel about bedside nursing and I doubt that there are enough good jobs, let alone good non bedside jobs for all of us burnt out nurses. That said some places are better than others so its good to look around for a better job. I generally don't worry about liability but do get stressed and overwhelmed at times especially when dealing with multiple critically ill patients, lazy CNA's who don't do their job, and unstable patients on the floor that have no business being there. It is so frustrating, unfair and unsafe for the patients that should be in ICU and getting the one on one care they need and for us forced to juggle patients.

I'm just trying to save for retirement in my Roth IRA, pay off my mortgage ASAP so I can retire early or at least cut back to part time.

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
That is not a liability- a pt post cath lab can ring the call bell if they are bleeding, you don't sit in the room and constantly observe them. You are going straight to making a generalization about the worst that can happen in every situation- if I did that I would never go to work. A liability is if you do something to put your license in jeopardy. If you don't want to be a nurse anymore than just move on, but making generalizations to have an excuse to leave, especially when not completely accurate, is not ok. If you think you are that dangerous than you shouldn't be working as a nurse.

I just finished reading some lawsuit case studies. Very disheartening. People are sue-happy and hospitals throw nurses under the bus. It really is hard to make it to 50 as a nurse without a cloud of neurosis starting to dog your every step.

There are good jobs out there (I managed to luck into one) so keep your eyes open, OP. And good luck.

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Specializes in Telemetry;ED.

Im new to ALLnurses.com and this is the question i ask myself. did you ever think of going for your masters degree? it does open a lot of doors. It looks like its tough looking for new job in a new profession when one hits 50. Ive never experienced it, but i do know that it is very competitive out there. Nursing is one of those professions that experience is valuable and its easier to find a new position within the same field. But then again, everyones experiences is different.

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Specializes in Telemetry;ED.

Jrwest, i think we all feel that way....:nurse:

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Specializes in critical care, ER,ICU, CVSURG, CCU.
I don't feel dangerous- quite the opposite- I am trying to keep things safe despite not getting any support. Many of these pt's should have sitters. Especially some of the post cath confused pts who don't understand what they even had done.

I dont need an excuse to leave. That's why I had asked if others knew of other adults changing professions at a later age.

Thanks anyway.

i sorta changed careers at 52, but is was respiratory therapy, went back to school, got AaS, in respiratory, and registered, ten days later.....but six month into working as critical care respiratory therapist, knew I wanted to return to nursing, and have not looked back, Guess I took a two and one half years paid vacation

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If OP says she needs to keep up her wages, it doesn't make sense to me to rack up more debt and increase COL at 50 to make the same or possibly less money. I would rather find another job with slightly lower pay than to spin the paycheck to paycheck hamster wheel even faster.

I think OP needs to invest in self care and get mentally and physically healthier (I say that because high job stress has probably taken its toll) and use her patient care experience to find another job. There's no reason why OP can't get into a desk or telephonic position like others do. She does need to be competitive though and not wear burnout on her sleeve.

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I agree with OP in that over the last few years the nursing profession has become more of a liability than ever. Yes it has always been a liability, heck just walking out of your house everyday is a liability, but it has gotten so much WORSE! Let me give you an example.

In 2010 I moved to OK from NY because finding a job with only an ADN in NY is virtually impossible. I started working for a Level 4 trauma center in a relatively rural area. I was a jack of all trades at this hospital and worked in every department, I gained a lot of valuable experience and was very close to my coworkers. In 2014, the hospital couldn't stay afloat so they sold out to a "for-profit" corporation (we WERE a not-for-profit facility). We saw things change for the worse immediately. We lost 3 of our best Hospitalists because their contracts were up and the corporation was trying to lowball them. They quit and were replaced by some of the scariest doctors on the planet, I wouldn't want these doctors taking care of my plant let alone my family member, but they were willing to work for far less money so the fact that they are incompetent isn't an issue to the corporation. They froze our wages, denied us raises, took away our PTO, did away with pensions, and switched our health insurance to a plan with a $6000 deductible. This caused 90% of our well seasoned veteran nurses to quit and go elsewhere as well. And once again the corporation was probably ecstatic because the nurses who left were making top rate ($35 an hour) so now they could go out and hire new grads as replacements for these veteran nurses, and they only have to pay them $18 an hour! They are making money hand over fist! Next thing they did was tell us "no more overtime!". If we didn't have enough nurses to staff a department, we could call somebody in, as long as it didn't put that person over 80 hours. If you couldn't find a nurse to work that wouldn't put them into overtime, then we had to suck it up and split the extra assignment as best we could.

Do you not see the potential for disaster here? It's clear as day. You have doctors who got their licenses from a cracker jack box giving orders to new grad nurses who aren't ready to even be on their own yet, taking double and triple assignments that would challenge most of us veteran nurses! And you don't see the liability? Please tell me you're joking. Needless to say, I don't work at this facility anymore. I've worked at 3 different places since I left and it isn't any different anywhere else. The dollar is the bottom line, it's the only thing these corporations care about! But let me tell you what the nail in the coffin was for this particular job. We were short staffed in ICU so everybody had to take a triple assignment. The nurses I was working with had been nurses for less than a year. One of my patients was septic so I was running around crazy trying to stabilize her. One of my other patients was from a nursing home and she had a history of severe COPD and had a trach. She would come in every couple of months and get admitted to ICU for pneumonia, and we always had to put her on the vent. This night she was extremely confused and kept pulling the vent off of her trach, as I'm chasing the other patients' blood pressure, and I had another patient on top of this. Next thing I know I hear one of the nurses scream for me to go into the room of the lady who had the trach. Of course the vent was alarming (again), but when I got into the room the patient was on the floor. She was 100% bedridden and hadn't walked in YEARS! She couldn't even move her legs! AND I had all 4 siderails up! *****?? Anyways, I noticed she was extremely tender in the right hip area. I called the Hospitalist and he came to see her and ordered an x-ray of the hip and a ct scan of the same hip. And because she's an ICU patient guess who had to go to radiology with her? That's right! Me! I hope you haven't forgotten about the other 2 patients I had yet. Anyways, CT scan of the hip was clear. X-ray of the hip was clear. But I noticed something odd in the lower left corner of the hip X-ray. It looked like bone fragments. The radiology tech said "holy crap you're right, let's X-ray her femur." We x-rayed the femur despite that fact that the doctor didn't order one, and sure enough she had a spiral fracture of the femur. We called the Hospitalist and told him to look at the films because she has a fracture. He said "I don't see any fracture." We were like SERIOUSLY???? Then we realized he had only looked at the films of the hip, so we told him to look at the one of the femur. He agreed it was a fracture and told us to consult ortho. The supervisor advised him that ortho was out of town and wasn't going to be back for a week, so we needed to transfer her out. The Hospitalist actually started arguing with the HS about ortho being out of town. Meanwhile, the pt's color is getting white as chalk, and I couldn't get a pedal pulse by Doppler on that foot. We kept calling him back because the patient's condition was worsening! He got sick of us calling him so at 3 am he called the house supervisor to tell her he was signing off on the pt. We were all in utter disbelief. What do we do now? Bring her husband in and have him sign her out AMA and then bring her to the ER? Do we let her sit there until day shift comes and let them deal with it? Maybe we can call her primary physician and give him a run down of what's happening and he can get her transferred. Those were our options. We decided that signing her out and bringing her back in through the ER would not look good at all for the hospital. And the pt wasn't going to make it another 6 hours for day shift to come in. We called her primary doctor (at 3 am) and thankfully he got her transferred and they were able to save her leg.

Next time I worked I got called into the office. The Hospitalist went to my manager and defamed me in every way possible. He said I didn't "show enough compassion" towards the patient, I was "out of my scope" for doing an X-ray without an order, etc. I plead my case, but needless to say, I was fired. And that is a firsthand account of how much these corporations, hospitals, doctors, managers care about these patients. They tried to go after my nursing license but the board found "no evidence of misconduct". I framed the letter from the BON and hung it on my wall. Time for a career change? Yeah probably. Things are just completely out of control.

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A retroperitoneal bleed is an internal bleeding that requires immediate vascular surgery. When a pt gets a retro they don't know that they're bleeding! I've seen people in their 30's develop a retro and bleed to death overnight without even realizing it. Only way you can assess for a retro is to look at the site and assess for pedal/posterior tibial pulses.

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
I agree with OP in that over the last few years the nursing profession has become more of a liability than ever. Yes it has always been a liability, heck just walking out of your house everyday is a liability, but it has gotten so much WORSE! Let me give you an example.

In 2010 I moved to OK from NY because finding a job with only an ADN in NY is virtually impossible. I started working for a Level 4 trauma center in a relatively rural area. I was a jack of all trades at this hospital and worked in every department, I gained a lot of valuable experience and was very close to my coworkers. In 2014, the hospital couldn't stay afloat so they sold out to a "for-profit" corporation (we WERE a not-for-profit facility). We saw things change for the worse immediately. We lost 3 of our best Hospitalists because their contracts were up and the corporation was trying to lowball them. They quit and were replaced by some of the scariest doctors on the planet, I wouldn't want these doctors taking care of my plant let alone my family member, but they were willing to work for far less money so the fact that they are incompetent isn't an issue to the corporation. They froze our wages, denied us raises, took away our PTO, did away with pensions, and switched our health insurance to a plan with a $6000 deductible. This caused 90% of our well seasoned veteran nurses to quit and go elsewhere as well. And once again the corporation was probably ecstatic because the nurses who left were making top rate ($35 an hour) so now they could go out and hire new grads as replacements for these veteran nurses, and they only have to pay them $18 an hour! They are making money hand over fist! Next thing they did was tell us "no more overtime!". If we didn't have enough nurses to staff a department, we could call somebody in, as long as it didn't put that person over 80 hours. If you couldn't find a nurse to work that wouldn't put them into overtime, then we had to suck it up and split the extra assignment as best we could.

Do you not see the potential for disaster here? It's clear as day. You have doctors who got their licenses from a cracker jack box giving orders to new grad nurses who aren't ready to even be on their own yet, taking double and triple assignments that would challenge most of us veteran nurses! And you don't see the liability? Please tell me you're joking. Needless to say, I don't work at this facility anymore. I've worked at 3 different places since I left and it isn't any different anywhere else. The dollar is the bottom line, it's the only thing these corporations care about! But let me tell you what the nail in the coffin was for this particular job. We were short staffed in ICU so everybody had to take a triple assignment. The nurses I was working with had been nurses for less than a year. One of my patients was septic so I was running around crazy trying to stabilize her. One of my other patients was from a nursing home and she had a history of severe COPD and had a trach. She would come in every couple of months and get admitted to ICU for pneumonia, and we always had to put her on the vent. This night she was extremely confused and kept pulling the vent off of her trach, as I'm chasing the other patients' blood pressure, and I had another patient on top of this. Next thing I know I hear one of the nurses scream for me to go into the room of the lady who had the trach. Of course the vent was alarming (again), but when I got into the room the patient was on the floor. She was 100% bedridden and hadn't walked in YEARS! She couldn't even move her legs! AND I had all 4 siderails up! *****?? Anyways, I noticed she was extremely tender in the right hip area. I called the Hospitalist and he came to see her and ordered an x-ray of the hip and a ct scan of the same hip. And because she's an ICU patient guess who had to go to radiology with her? That's right! Me! I hope you haven't forgotten about the other 2 patients I had yet. Anyways, CT scan of the hip was clear. X-ray of the hip was clear. But I noticed something odd in the lower left corner of the hip X-ray. It looked like bone fragments. The radiology tech said "holy crap you're right, let's X-ray her femur." We x-rayed the femur despite that fact that the doctor didn't order one, and sure enough she had a spiral fracture of the femur. We called the Hospitalist and told him to look at the films because she has a fracture. He said "I don't see any fracture." We were like SERIOUSLY???? Then we realized he had only looked at the films of the hip, so we told him to look at the one of the femur. He agreed it was a fracture and told us to consult ortho. The supervisor advised him that ortho was out of town and wasn't going to be back for a week, so we needed to transfer her out. The Hospitalist actually started arguing with the HS about ortho being out of town. Meanwhile, the pt's color is getting white as chalk, and I couldn't get a pedal pulse by Doppler on that foot. We kept calling him back because the patient's condition was worsening! He got sick of us calling him so at 3 am he called the house supervisor to tell her he was signing off on the pt. We were all in utter disbelief. What do we do now? Bring her husband in and have him sign her out AMA and then bring her to the ER? Do we let her sit there until day shift comes and let them deal with it? Maybe we can call her primary physician and give him a run down of what's happening and he can get her transferred. Those were our options. We decided that signing her out and bringing her back in through the ER would not look good at all for the hospital. And the pt wasn't going to make it another 6 hours for day shift to come in. We called her primary doctor (at 3 am) and thankfully he got her transferred and they were able to save her leg.

Next time I worked I got called into the office. The Hospitalist went to my manager and defamed me in every way possible. He said I didn't "show enough compassion" towards the patient, I was "out of my scope" for doing an X-ray without an order, etc. I plead my case, but needless to say, I was fired. And that is a firsthand account of how much these corporations, hospitals, doctors, managers care about these patients. They tried to go after my nursing license but the board found "no evidence of misconduct". I framed the letter from the BON and hung it on my wall. Time for a career change? Yeah probably. Things are just completely out of control.

And that's what the people in that community have for a healthcare facility!

:eek: :clown: :uhoh3: :no:

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Very sad! I used to be proud to carry the title of "nurse". 10 years later and I'm ashamed. I'm only 33, I'm collecting unemployment and actively pursuing a career in construction. Good riddance nursing!

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Specializes in Emergency Medicine.

If you are ashamed to be a nurse, then you should find another career.

Not all hospitals are perfect, and a lot are run like businesses, which is what is causing the downfall of medicine, not necessarily the medical professionals staffing those hospitals. PP, you said you had a triple assignment, you had three pts- in the ED I routinely have 4-5 pts, 2-3 of them ICU players. It happens and I work for a top notch facility. This is why we need to advocate for patient ratios, not run for the hills and say we are ashamed of our profession. It won't get better if people to stick to their guns.

That doctor was ridiculous, yes. I hope you charted well- which it sounds like you did. Yes, I too would have left that job, but like I said, I routinely have that many ICU players under my care. I work as a team and somehow we come out unscathed.

I will NEVER be ashamed of being a nurse- I've worked hard and done some amazing things. We need nurses, and we need to stick up for the future of nursing- bc one day, they will be taking care of us.

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It is a business! But when something goes wrong, who gets blamed? Even if it's the doctor who made a mistake, is the doctor the one who gets written up? No. I have seen instances where a doctor makes a mistake, pharmacy doesn't catch the mistake, the nurse gives the medicine...guess who got written up? The doctor ordered a pt to get heparin sq every 12 hours for DVT prophylaxis not realizing the pt was already on sq lovenox. Pharmacy didn't catch it and put the order through, even delivered the medication to the unit with the pt's label on it. The nurse gave it and guess what happened...the NURSE got fired! Everybody else walked away Scott free. I've worked MICU, SICU, CVICU, CCU, med/Surg, stepdown, and Yes ER too. One of the hospitals I worked at we would have 10-12 patients apiece in the ER. Most often times, 6 of those 12 patients were chest pain r/o that would stay in the ER all night long and you had to get them ready to go to the cath lab before you left, and the cath lab would bring them back to the er to recover them! Yes my charting is always precise, because I've seen too many nurses get blamed and fired for the mistakes of others! You're not a nurse you're a punching bag! I guess you like being a punching bag! You think things are going to get better? Think again! The patients have become so entitled it makes me sick! Check in to the ER and as I'm triaging they say "can I get a room with a TV?" You put them in their room and no sooner do you walkout they put on the call light and ask for a sandwich and a soda, as an ESI 1 is rolling into the trauma bay with CPR in progress. You run to help with code, completely forget about the soda and sandwich order, but you were able to resuscitate the patient who was coding. You find discharge papers for the sandwich/soda pt, you give them their discharge instructions and a survey about their visit, and they write a nasty comment on the survey about how you ignored them the whole time they were in the ER. The next day you get called into the managers office and you think she's going to tell you what a great job you did with the coding pt because after all you did help save his life. She doesn't mention that pt at all, instead she lambasted you for 30 minutes straight for forgetting about UTI lady's soda and sandwich. Oh yes, so rewarding! GTFO with that noise. Have fun being a punching bag!

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