anyone decide NOT to become an RN due to current nursing issues?

[-jt]

Is there anyone here (nurses aide, student, healthcare professional, etc) who once considered a nursing career but has since decided NOT to become an RN due to current nursing issues like unsafe staffing, mandatory ot, difficult workplace conditions, lack of respect --- you know --- all the things we are reading in the news. Was anyone on their way to becoming an RN & then changed their mind because of what theyve been reading about the reality at the bedsides today?

[Going80INA55]

I have been a nurse for 5 years. I have never claimed to like all the bedside care, poor staffing etc, so I dont do it. I work in a non traditional environment, sitting behind a desk all day.

So am I still a nurse, YES. I may not stick my hands in POO everyday, but I still care for patients and make impacts on their lives.

So If you are considering being an RN remember there are many other jobs out there besides bedside care...and NO you dont have to have many years experience to get them. There is a great need for nurses in many types of business environments....they like us.

[MICU RN]

Been a bedside RN (ADN) 4 1/2 yrs just received my BSN this week. If I don't go to anesthesia school next fall I am out of bedside nursing. Cleaned enough shit for a life time, if this is nursing's idea of a college profession, no wonder there is huge shortage. And guess what? This one will not resolve as easy as in the past. Why? Because with all the college professsions open to women today, for example half the MEd. schools classes are now female, do you really think bright women are going to settle for this crap. The days of most college educated women going into either teaching or nursing are over. The hospital admin. and nursing school admin. have to accept this and try to make the profession more appealing so that it compete with other college professions. Having to do plenty of nursing aid work, clerk work, and waiting on the patient is not going to cut it. I am a male, but I would not recommend nursing to my children. The job description really needs to change and start reflecting the professional training and education that we have to receive in order to become a RN. A BSN degree requires plenty of hard work and studying, more than many other undergrad. degrees, but we have very little autonomy and expected to plenty of dirty work and are paid a blue collar wage to boot.

And before nurses start telling me how grateful I should be to have a job just rember I am making this comparison to other college professions. Not waiting tables or other blue collar jobs. Hell, I made almost as much waiting tables that I do as a RN. All I am stating is that if this profession wants to compete with other college professions it needs to change.