From Failure to Launch to Nursing: Need Advice

CCU BSN RN · Oct 27, 2016

I don't mean to discourage you from being a nurse. I'm sure you have the potential to be great at it. Several things in your narrative give me pause, however.

The only way to get through nursing school without killing yourself (literally and/or figuratively) is to be extremely driven, dedicated, and sure that you want to be a nurse. It is one of the most rigorous Bachelor's degrees offered in this country. To say that you're not a math and science person...this is a Science degree. Sure there's fluff in there too, but you need to be ready to take Anatomy and Physiology, Microbiology, Chemistry, Pathophysiology, Pharmacology, Statistics at a BARE MINIMUM.

And to say you're not a math and science person and want to be a CRNA potentially? That is literally THE MOST RIGOROUS nursing advanced degree in terms of hard science and mathematics.

If you want to help people without understanding the science behind it, be a CNA. All the warm fuzzies, none of the excessive time in school or liability (not trying to be mean to CNAs here at all).

You've got to want it more than having some vague idea that you like helping people. I mean no disrespect, but I would try starting with a CNA course, it's quick, relatively inexpensive, and will get you paid exposure to healthcare and the ability to help people. You'll work closely with nurses on a regular basis, and you'll get a great understanding of our role and knowledge base. It's probably the best way to know if nursing is right for you, is to spend a lot of time with us.

TriciaJ, RN · Oct 28, 2016

CCU gave you great advice. I was going to suggest that if you've already functioned as an EMT and liked it, why not get back into it? Nursing is hard enough when you feel driven to do it. If you're looking for people to work and socialize with, you can find that anywhere. Nursing is probably not a good profession to get into for the benefit of one's own mental health.

hmatthewcooper · Nov 2, 2016

OP,

The previous posters bring up some valid points, but reading your narrative, I couldn't help but think about my own introduction to nursing which had some similarities to your own.

You do have to have single-minded devotion to get through a nursing program. That part is definitely true. I was originally an associate prepared RN. My class started as 93 people. We graduated 33. For two years, we lost classmates every time we took a big exam. Some of my closest friends, with whom I had struggled and studied since the beginning of the program, flunked out on the last exam of the last course. It was very difficult mentally, emotionally, and at times physically...and that's just school. It gets much more stressful when you begin practicing.

I literally didnt know what a nurse did until I was in my first med-surg clinical. I had researched it online and asked friends that were in nursing what their day consisted of, but I had never been hospitalized or privy to the inner sanctum of healthcare. I had no context for the explanations that were being offered. It wasn't until my first clinical instructor pulled my struggling first semester group into a room to obtain a stool specimen from a man with dementia that I figured it out. We log rolled him, changed his brief, cleaned him up, cut off a small piece of stool with a popsicle stick, put it in a little plastic jar, made up the patients bed, gave him some medicine, something to drink, and fluffed his pillow. The whole time we were working with him he was giggling and making these hooting sounds like he was being tickled. When we left he was so much more comfortable, and he had a big grin across his rosy cheeks. It was hard physical work, hilariously absurd, a little disgusting, and the nicest thing I had ever done for anybody....that's nursing. I looked at my instructor and chuckled, "that's it?"

She looked back at me grinning and said, "that's it."

Nursing is the spirit of rolling up your sleeves to do hard unheralded work that nobody else wants to do on behalf of someone you don't know with little reward-indeed maybe even at great personal cost. The scene that I described is an example of basic bedside nursing, and you'll do your share of that, but nursing today is engaged in the directed use of that spirit of compassionate work in many different arenas. We're an ancient trade and a young science, but even dating back to Flo (that's Florence Nightingale to non-nurses) nurses were using their brains to address health disparities, research clinical issues, study the health of populations, and increase the safety of interacting with the healthcare apparatus.

In critical care settings like the ones you've experienced you're going to find an abundance of direct concrete thinking type A personalities. If you work in psychiatry you might find much more mild easy going abstract thinking type B personalities. It really just depends. Nursing is a huge field. There's something for everyone that shares that same spirit of compassionate service to others.

If the idea of performing unpleasant tasks for long hard hours on an understaffed unit for not that much money all while having more positive impact in the lives of strangers in a single day than most people have in a lifetime of volunteerism (and maybe earning a wicked adrenaline rush in the process) doesn't sound appealing to you, then do yourself a favor and consider a different career. Nursing seems to be everybody's parachute from unpleasant circumstances these days. What they don't realize is that nursing is so in demand because most people don't want to work so hard for someone else for so little compensation. It takes a special kind of person to stick with it. If it does pique your interest then try it out, but your going to to have to become friends with science if you go that route.

Nursing is a science itself, but you'll need a background in traditional "hard" sciences to understand it. Try some prerequisites courses at a community college. Take some advanced math courses, statistics, chemistry, biology, and see how you feel about it. My whole life I thought I was bad at math until I went back to school at 23 (10+ years ago) as a grownup to do nursing. It turns out I'm really good at math. I had just never really applied myself to it. If you struggle with math you'll struggle in the hard sciences and in nursing, but it's not string theory. It can be learned. Believe it or not, one day as a nursing student you may gleefully anticipate exams that contain math because they can be solved with correct answers, which is not always the case in nursing. They joke that nursing multiple choice is the only exam format where the choices offer four correct answers, yet they're ALL wrong! One day you may understand...

Anyway... best of luck in whatever you decide. If you would like to ask any specific questions feel free to message me. I am a veritibal wealth of useless trivia and nursing stories. Just sayin...

allnurses Guide · Nov 4, 2016

All of the above is good advice/insight. I have only one thing to add....it is harder than ever to get into your specialty of choice. Most nurses have to spend at least a year or two working in jobs that aren't what they pictured when applying to nursing school.

I am a big believer that happiness is largely a matter of choice and if your current degree is useless to you and you are floundering, nursing is as good a choice as any. It is a career that has a lot of different pathways and options after you get a few years of acute care experience and while we are grossly underpaid for what we do, we do make a livable wage. Is it easy? Nope. Do you have to be a math/science whiz? Nope. I hated math and science. It is doable even if you aren't partial to math and science subjects. It has, however, taken a lot of determination on my part, uncommon focus and at times has lead to some "imposter syndrome" for having achieved in an area where I never once saw myself until I got there.

The bottom line is...this is just a decision. You don't have to know you want to be a nurse as much as commit to being one and accept that this is not a linear career. Very few hop right in and get to the CRNA track easily or even into the ICU easily. But if you think you can do it...you are probably right.

HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD · Nov 7, 2016

Have you considered Healthcare Information Management? This is a rapidly evolving profession - dealing with a wide range of issues from ensuring accuracy of electronic records to safeguarding them from cyber attacks. With your background in library science, it would seem that you'd have a real advantage.

amoLucia · Nov 16, 2016

To hmatthewcooper - a very on-point and honest post. TY for saying it so well for me.

To OP - this may be off in another direction but it is something to think about. COST!!!

You're potentially looking at an extended educational program. If you've taken out monies before for your other degrees, you may have trouble financing your education. There's really no way to get past the educational, experienicial and time requirements to head in off in the direction you're thinking.

I do like the post by HouTX. Sounds really good to me. If you feel a need, get an LPN degree (short school ) or those 'RN for those with other degrees' programs to acclimate yourself to accurate ground-level fundamental healthcare facility operations and move on to the Information Management arena.

Good luck.