I feel like I'm asked this question surprisingly frequently, often by family and occasionally by friends, acquaintances, dates, and even patients. Maybe it's because I come from a family of doctors, or because many of close friends from my first degree were pre-med because nursing/pre-nursing on my campus didn't really exist.
I can say with honesty that I've never come home from a shift and thought, "I wish I was a doctor." However, there have been a handful of shifts where I've come home explicitly thinking, "Holy crap, I'm so glad I'm not a doctor."
I briefly worked in x-ray during nursing school, and I found that some x-ray techs expressed regret that they hadn't become physicians. However, I think x-ray differs from nursing because there aren't as many opportunities for advancement (vs. nursing, where you have the option become an NP, CNS, etc., along with many non-clinical paths).
I'm just curious to see if other ANers are faced with this (well-intentioned but occasionally insulting) question. What's your go-to response?
Sometimes I wish I was a doctor. I'm a nurse in the UK and we don't have anywhere near the same level of pay, career advancement or responsibility that our US counterparts seem to have. Doctor's do work long hours here in the NHS, but probably nowhere as long as you guys in America and some nurses here have to work 60+ hours since pay is so ****** here. And of course, in the UK nurses still have a very low status, you would not believe the number of times I've been called a bum wiper, or all we do is wash people. In the UK, doctors have natural career progression, yearly salary rises, research opportunities and respect. I still love my job, but there's a lot I would change about it.
I was accepted into graduate school for my DNP before I even finished my BSN! I knew I wanted to obtain "advanced" clinical experience and education related to NURSING.
In my opinion I chose nursing because:
- Physicians CURE (try to) the disease process. Nurses CARE for the patient's symptoms/behaviors/thoughts/emotions in relation to the disease process.
- Physicians make clinical judgements based on physical assessment and observation of the patient's condition and develop treatment based on the numerical data from past research.
Nurses make clinical judgements based on assessment of what we see, what the patient is telling us, and intuition from previous experiences - which ultimately guide or priority of care
- Physicians do find the associated treatment and implement it based on lines of treatment and recommendations,
BUT nurses make sure that the treatment is feasible, realistic, and agreeable to the patients wants, needs, and cultural/spiritual views.
- Physicians determine that the patient is appropriate for discharge back into the community based on clinical outcomes/improvement.
Nurses however determine if patients are ready to return based on their home conditions, available resources and their knowledge of disease self-management techniques - which will all advertently affect whether or not the patient will be compliant.
Lastly, physicians understand the disease processes inside and out and can diagnose the patient based on biological, chemical and pathophysiological mechanisms....
But nurses can assess and understand the patient's disease processes based on bio/psycho/social perspectives.
Nursing is so unique, flexible, challenging, interesting, amusing, even fought and heart breaking but everything I do I do for the well being of my whole patient - body, mind, -!: soul.
vandiola
78 Posts
Sometimes I wish I was a doctor. I'm a nurse in the UK and we don't have anywhere near the same level of pay, career advancement or responsibility that our US counterparts seem to have. Doctor's do work long hours here in the NHS, but probably nowhere as long as you guys in America and some nurses here have to work 60+ hours since pay is so ****** here. And of course, in the UK nurses still have a very low status, you would not believe the number of times I've been called a bum wiper, or all we do is wash people. In the UK, doctors have natural career progression, yearly salary rises, research opportunities and respect. I still love my job, but there's a lot I would change about it.