Cruise Nursing????

KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN · Oct 7, 2015

I knew one nurse who did it for the time her husband was an engineer on the same ship. By her, it was nothing relaxing at all. The ship was huge (plus the crew), folks from all walks of life from 2-3 years old (Disney, if I am not mistaken) to ailing 90+ seniors. There was not much support, and handful of nurses plus one nurse practitioner, plus one physician "sometimes" had it all, from chronic hemodialysis to acute mental status changes, with accidental things like burns (kitchen personnel), ETOH, of course, etc. They had a sort of resustitation bay in which, by her, they could keep almost anybody with heart still beating alive till airlift comes. This nurse was full of quite believable war stories (after all, we all know about possibility of norovirus outbreak on cruise ships and it is usually not that a big deal, but with people on dialysis, young children, ailing seniors, kids with life-threatening diseases who got on that ship because Make-a-Wish, the same looks quite dufferent). She had years of experience in ER with trauma, ICU and high-risk maternity, and at the end the job was too much stress for her to deal with. Plus, by her own words, she hardly saw daylight most of the days, leaving alone relaxing by the pool.

mandaf88 · Oct 7, 2015

Thank you for sharing! If something sounds too good to be true it probably is :)

NedRN · Oct 7, 2015

If you do a search here, this is a recurring topic. Low pay and hard work are mentioned a lot, but some love it.