Engineers who switched to nursing

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I am an engineering graduate and am planning on taking up nursing. Do you think I have what it takes to pass BSN and eventually, NCLEX and NLE? Is there any engineer here who is now a nurse? I'd love to hear from you all. Thanks.

Specializes in Neuro-Surgery, Med-Surg, Home Health.
my husband is a computer engineering graduate and worked in the philippines as a comupter programmer.when we went here in the us, he had a tough time finding jobs so he enrolled for the cna course which just lasted for 1 1/2 mo in north carolina. we moved here in new england and he is now working as a cna and is now taking cmt course(when he gets certified, he can pass out meds in a nursing home or assisted living) which he's gonna finish this december.his next step now after this course is lpn.i could not even imagine him switching to healthcare.one time he mentioned to me he hoped that he just took nursing in the phils before as what was advised by his family/relatives.it is really a big transition from an engineer to a nurse but if you're really eager to do it, you can.for the green cards, lately, processing of papers are faster.we got ours in a year provided you got all the requirements.some even got theirs less than a year.goodluck!

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I hope your husband doesn't stop at LPN school. Most of the engineering graduates I met in the past have above average intelligence (and nurses too!), therefore encourage your 'intelligent' husband to proceed to RN school. He is still young and he will probably work for another 20-30 more years. The difference in pay for an LVN/LPN and an RN for that time period is in hundreds of thousands of dollars. RN's are in great demand, while LVN/LPN's are not.

About a month ago I attended the NURSEWEEK Job Fair that was held at the Hyatt Hotel in Burlingame, Calif. I happened to meet a fellow Filipino guy who just finished RN schooling here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I learned from him that he is an engineering graduate from the Philippines as well. He studied nursing here in the States when he could not work as an engineer here for lack of a professional license I suppose. He is full of hope of finding a lucrative U.S. Nursing job here in the SF Bay Area.

When I was attending high school at the Far Eastern University in Manila "a long time ago" most of my classmates who had better than average intelligence wanted to become engineers. I, who struggled a little bit in math but found science classes to be very interesting and easy, knew that I could not go to engineering school but I knew I would someday take one of the courses related to science.

I really didn't realize that I had a relatively easy road to my registered nursing job here in the U.S. until after I heard many of the stories of the recent Filipino arrivals here in the U.S., and the stories and hopes of the writers in this forum. I thank God for my blessings.

During the post 9/11 economic downturn particularly in California's Silicon Valley, many Filipino-American I.T. professionals/computer engineers had chosen to work as CNA's for that time being. I knew it was hard for those people to work as CNA's who are used to high pays and lots of perks from their former jobs. I don't see them anymore in our medical center and I presume that they are back working in the once again vibrant Silicon Valley.

If you are an RN here in the U.S., as long as you maintain high professional standards and competency, you can pretty much expect to easily find a high paying nursing job. To the readers in this forum who may already know this but have no experience yet working here in the States ( I can't speak for the Philippine nursing jobs as I did not work there), nursing here in the U.S. is a very demanding and stressful profession. Engineering to Nursing. That's quite a change.

Indeed.

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Hi,

I am an engineering graduate working in IT field for 6 years, looking for a carrier change to the field of nursing and I live in USA with H1B visa. I would like to get help/ideas/suggestions from this forum for changing my carrier and other legal activities for my visa to work as a nurse.

Thanks in advance.

You will find it very hard to be able to remain with the H1-B visa in nursing as most facilities want nothing to do with them. You will have to complete a full nursing program but then that means that you will not be working full-time in the IT field so you will be unable to maintain that status and will have to chance to F-1 more than likely. And then you have to be aware that the US is under a retrogression and they are not accepting petitions for the AOS, and we do not expect that to open for several years.

Recommend that you take the time to do some reading about the retrogression on the International Forum.

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I am a professional civil engineer and currently on my third year as a nursing stude here in ther Philippines. My wife is a nurse in Florida and I plan to be a CNA when I get there if i dont finish nursing here but I would definitely come back to finish the course here.

I guess it is easy for engineers to appreciate nursing as a vocation. Engineers are trained and taught to understand the principles and not just why it has to be done. I love nursing.

A thought just crossed my mind. Maybe this is the answer why a lot of engineers are also married to nurses.

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