Fulfillment from nursing practice

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I am considering nursing as a career but despite its financial security have opted out. Now that I do construction and consider with ernest building a farming business, I'm weighing the long term physical strain and relatively low financial profits. My main concern with a career in nursing is I consider it a part of the medical establishment, which has its best applicability to acute traumas but operates poorly in long term chronic care, by my esteem. How do nurses who've been awakened by the efficacy of holistic medicine function as nurses without accumulation of despair? How much time could I potentially have to farm while working as nurse?

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Specializes in Home Care, Psych, Education, Case Management.

Huh???

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Specializes in Gerontology.
Huh???

Ditto.

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You probably should stick with farming.

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Specializes in Adult and Pediatric Vascular Access, Paramedic.

LOL.. say what?!

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If you are asking if you can be crunchy and be a nurse, the answer is yes. Nurses are part of the "medical" establishment, but I do not rely on the Big Pharma Gods to do my job.

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I am considering nursing as a career but despite its financial security have opted out. Now that I do construction and consider with ernest building a farming business, I'm weighing the long term physical strain and relatively low financial profits. My main concern with a career in nursing is I consider it a part of the medical establishment, which has its best applicability to acute traumas but operates poorly in long term chronic care, by my esteem. How do nurses who've been awakened by the efficacy of holistic medicine function as nurses without accumulation of despair? How much time could I potentially have to farm while working as nurse?

Welcome to AN. As you might have guessed from the "huhs", your post is a bit difficult to decipher.

When you say that you've come to appreciate the importance of "holistic medicine" and believe in its efficacy, do you mean holistic as taking both the psychological aspects of the individual as well as the physical symptoms/manifestation of the disease into consideration and treat the "whole" person or do you mean holistic as in alternative and complementary therapies as for example chiropractic and homeopathy (not that the majority of these therapies work. If they were proven to work, they'd be considered evidence-based practice. I'm just trying to figure out what you mean).

You use the phrase "accumulation of despair" as potentially being the result of not being able to practice in the way you believe is the most efficient and helpful way. The way I interpret that is that you're wondering how one can find a way to still feel job satisfaction despite the fact that you very often don't have enough time and sufficient nurse staffing levels to be able to see and treat "the whole patient", all the time.

But it could also mean that you believe that all nurses ever do in chronic care is throw pills at their patients, while you think we should be doing Reiki and aromatherapy as well. As I said, your post is a bit unclear.

There is no easy, one size fits all answer to your question. For me personally, I work in anesthesia so I only take care of one patient at a time. That's offers me the chance to always feel that I've devoted all my attention and skill to that particular patient.

Since I find the medical aspects of my specialty interesting and am constantly learning new things and staying abreast of current research, and I also have the opportunity to give all my patients my full attention, I feel that my job is worthwhile. That gives me job satisfaction. There's no crisis of conscience or "accumulation of despair".

So I guess the trick is to find an area that suits you as an individual.

Nursing has many challenges, but one of the positives, is that it's a very wide field that encompasses many different specialties and care forms.

How much time you would have available to farming while nursing of course depends on what other commitments/responsibilities you have in your life outside of work, if you intend to work as a full-time or part-time nurse, how much sleep you require, how much time your commute to your nursing job will take, your health/energy level and whether you are willing to work seven days a week or not. The question you ask is really impossible for an internet stranger to answer.

I'm not American, but if it helps any, most nurses who post on this forum who work full-time seem to work either three twelve-hour shifts per week (days, nights or both) or five eight-hour shifts, Mon-Fri. But I'm sure there are a myriad of possible schedules out there.

OP, if you want more specific advice from posters (instead of my generalized blah-blah ;)), I think you need to provide some further details about what it was that sparked your interest in nursing in the first place, and also expand a bit on what you believe or fear the drawbacks are.

Best wishes!

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My main concern with a career in nursing is I consider it a part of the medical establishment, which has its best applicability to acute traumas but operates poorly in long term chronic care.

While this is very true, most people do not think/act in terms of their own long term best interests. Business culture, which is what medical culture is in this country, is very short-sighted but I think is making efforts to do better but only because it saves money.

How do nurses who've been awakened by the efficacy of holistic medicine function as nurses without accumulation of despair?

Holistic medicine is such a broad term, I am not sure what you mean. I know when I am at the bedside, I am doing the best for my patients in that moment. No despair, but definitely some frustration.

How much time could I potentially have to farm while working as nurse?

None. Seriously.

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Specializes in school nurse.
I am considering nursing as a career but despite its financial security have opted out. Now that I do construction and consider with ernest building a farming business, I'm weighing the long term physical strain and relatively low financial profits. My main concern with a career in nursing is I consider it a part of the medical establishment, which has its best applicability to acute traumas but operates poorly in long term chronic care, by my esteem. How do nurses who've been awakened by the efficacy of holistic medicine function as nurses without accumulation of despair? How much time could I potentially have to farm while working as nurse?

Well, with this style of writing you'd be well situated to develop a new 'Nursing Theory'...

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I guess I associate the term "holistic" these days to go along the lines of essential oils and cbd oil will cure everything. The term holistic used to mean something different. I don't put much stock in those things except for placebo effect. Which is great for those that have nothing wrong with them, but truly think they do.

It all depends on your definition of holistic. I truly feel like things like diet, exercise, and massage can be beneficial for certain conditions. Science proves it.

But I don't buy that essential oils and elderberry will cure the flu. I need scientific evidence. That's what nursing is. Evidence based practice.

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Specializes in Critical care, Trauma.

I'm not sure how to answer part of your question but, in case it helps, one of my charge nurses works 3-4 12hr days in our ICU and the other days on his farm. I don't know specific information about his operation but I know he has a number of cattle and the operation is large enough that it adds a significant amount to his income. That being said if something were to go wrong (i.e. cow went "down," needed to have a vet out to pull a calf, etc) he wouldn't necessarily know until after work, which for part of the year is well after dark. So to manage both is pretty much constant work. I'm a good 10-15 years younger than my charge nurse and the 3-4 days of work by itself are enough for me. I like my career and the people with which I work, and I've been able to support myself and my husband while we've both been in school (me part time bridge from ADN to BSN, and him fulltime grad school) with minimal loans.

It's ok to want to do it all, but I definitely wouldn't want to try to start doing both simultaneously. Commit to one, get established, then see if you want to add the other. Nursing by itself is pretty taxing work, cognitively and physically. I love doing 12 hr shifts but there is definitely a bit of a recovery period required.

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Specializes in PCCN.
If you are asking if you can be crunchy and be a nurse, the answer is yes. Nurses are part of the "medical" establishment, but I do not rely on the Big Pharma Gods to do my job.

Heheh crunchy,lol

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