How do you feel about being a nurse?

Nurses General Nursing

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Simply, do you enjoy being a nurse? Does it make you happy? Or do you regret it? Do you have any very specific regrets related to being a nurse?

I absolutely love being a nurse and have enjoyed all patient care in all settings.

It's been the employers themselves, lack of benefits, certain areas of nursing, beauracracy, mean co-workers, drive time and homework that's been required for certain nursing jobs that I have NOT liked.

Regrets? Yes.

My advice would be to continue your education, get BSN, a Masters, as many helpful certifications as you can, work in a variety of settings for experience.

When you get to be an older nurse who has 20+ years experience primarily in one specialized field only, you're going to have a terrible time finding other work.

Think of the future and where you hope to be when you are an old nurse. Work for companies where you'll get a pension or other retirement benefits. It's a bit late when retirement is only about 10 years away.

So many retired nurses have dedicated their lives to nursing, only to be left struggling to make ends meet with a social security check.

Hospitals want new grads or younger nurses who can work outrageous schedules for less than what they would have to pay an older nurse. As we get older, we become more of a worker's comp risk. We can't do the things we did when we were younger nurses.

In my case, my jobs required lots of driving and unpredictable, last minute work and homework. I was great at it. Age does catch up to you. Prepare.

I attended a hospital job fair on fair full of hope and anticipation. I was the only older nurse there. Due to my lack of recent hospital experience, I certainly wasn't a great candidate and did not get called.

Prepare re for the future because before you know it 25 or so years have gone by.

Specializes in public health, women's health, reproductive health.

I don't know if I would say I regret it. I am proud to be a nurse. However, if I had to do it all over again, I would choose physical therapy or occupational therapy...something else in healthcare. The amount of crap that a nurse has to put up with on any given day is ridiculous. More importantly, there are places and times where the ratios, non-nursing tasks and oppressive never-ending charting make it impossible to attend to patients and keep them safe. I don't enjoy walking into a workplace that is one big accident waiting to happen. Not every employer is that careless and money hungry, thank goodness. To enjoy being a nurse, you have to be very selective about where you work.

It has good and bad aspects like any job, I suppose.

Nursing has been very good to me and I like/love it more now than I did when I started. I have mostly remained in one field and have learned or am learning all of the aspects.

I don't know that I would start new in 2017, it's impossible to say whether I'd have the same outcome. For the experience I have had, I've been treated well, appreciated by employer/patients/coworkers, paid adequately, enjoy my work and every bad day has had something good in it with most being good to great days.

Specializes in Primary Care, LTC, Private Duty.

It's a means to an end. I mean, don't get me wrong, I genuinely enjoy patient care (TRUE patient care and connection, not just ***-kissing for politics/survey scores), but nursing has also showed me its dark side from the beginning: the "no matter what you do right, you're always wrong" politics of a badly run unit, the hospitality-over-HEALTHcare mentality, understaffing for the owners' bottom lines, being cancelled at the last minute for low census (but heaven forbid the time I had to call out for food poisoning and actually ended up having to get admitted because of it!), nasty/dramatic/insubordinate coworkers, etc.

However, I knew from the time I began high school that I would need to hit the ground running in a field where I could, relatively quickly (i.e. no extended years of unpaid internships, etc), earn a wage that would allow me to be able to not only support myself but my now-disabled mother who had me late in life. Between her health, her age, and the fact that I'm an only child, I knew at an early age that it would all come down to me. In high school, as soon as I could, I became an aide. Then it was onto community college for my ADN-RN program (since it would be cheaper and quicker than a BSN in the short run and allow me to bridge later on). So, despite its affects from time-to-time on my physical and mental health, I don't regret going into nursing. It has allowed me to care for my mother buy my first new-to-me car, and buy my modest house in an area I always wanted to live. I do wish I could've had the carefree, dorm college experience and most likely would have gone into a different field if things had been different, though.

Specializes in Critical Care; Cardiac; Professional Development.

I love being a nurse. It taps into the best side of myself and places me in a role that allows me to have a great feeling of meaning in my life. There are things that are very hard about being a nurse and not everyone can do it. It has struggles and heartbreaks and frustrations and infuriating limitations tied to the desire for profit by administration and the tendency for the human race to see how much they can get away with on the backs of others. This has caused me to change my role as a nurse. But I have never once regretted becoming one. I am very very proud of being a nurse.

Specializes in school/military/OR/home health.

Simply put, it's a living. I can't say that I am proud of being a nurse, it isn't something I love to tell people. It's what I do so I can feed myself and my children, and I like it well enough to continue, and I am pretty good at it. It's a field with unlimited variety, if you don't like one kind of nursing you can find another kind you will probably like. I've never gotten tremendous satisfaction out of my work, but neither have I hated it.

Basically, I never had a burning desire to be a nurse but since I had the opportunity to be one, here I am.

Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
Simply, do you enjoy being a nurse? Does it make you happy? Or do you regret it? Do you have any very specific regrets related to being a nurse?

I love what I do and have never (not even once regretted becoming a nurse). I work in-patient psych mostly adolescents and every day I leave work knowing that I made a difference in someone's life. The career choice provides a substantial 2nd income for our family which makes having a comfortable home and annual vacation possible.

Nursing has been very good to me. Yes there are days when I'd like to pull out my hair but that's not related to the career rather just to having a bad day. Life is what we make it - So make it good!

Hppy

Specializes in Ortho, CMSRN.

I love it! I was a reluctant candidate (encouraged by my mom, who became a nurse in her late 30s). I'm not a fan of the nasty cyst and pimple popping videos that other nurses and nursing students seem to love to post on facebook. I noted to my mom that I hated the smell of hospitals, and that poop and pee gross me out. She replied "You like people, right?" Me: "well, yeah". "You'll get over all that". She wasn't kidding. My first clinical, I helped to hold an incision while another, more experienced nurse did a wound vac. I was fine with that, but when I saw an NG tube for the first time, my knees went weak and I had to find a place to sit quickly, despite the crowded room. Really, you get over all of it. I love nursing. Med-surg nursing, specifically. I've done it for 3 years now and am well suited for the job. It's stressful and busy, but my manager is awesome. I am frequently noticed by patients and co-workers, and... call me human, but that makes me feel good and want to do more. The college that I got my BSN from called me the other day to inquire as to whether I'd like to seek my MSN. I do, eventually. Teaching specifically. I love bedside too much at this time to move on and get the MSN, even if they'd have offered it to me for free. I am INCREDIBLY grateful that my mom became a nurse later in life and encouraged me in the same direction. I would have never chosen this career on my own, but it is very fulfilling to me.

Specializes in MICU/CCU, SD, home health, neo, travel.

I kind of miss it, now that I'm retired, but if I had it to do over again I think I'd have finished my linguistics degree and gone on to something else, maybe the foreign service. I liked home health and travel nursing the best, in retrospect, and am now writing a fictionalized version of my home health years.

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

Nursing has been an interesting, challenging career with solid middle-class pay and benefits, indoor work, flexible scheduling and stable employment. I met my husband at work, along with most of my dear friends. I've been able to move cross country several times and find immediate employment. I've rarely had to endure commuter traffic (7-7 avoids the worst of it), and am free to decide to work every weekend in exchange for four days off during the week. Consequently, we've been able to cruise our boat to uncrowded anchorages, camp grounds almost always have a space, the ski lift lines are short, the movie theaters aren't crowded and dinner reservations are rarely a problem. We've had decent housing, reliable cars and a really, really nice lifestyle. And did I mention that the work was interesting and challenging?

Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
Nursing is brutal. You are bullied 24/7 by you coworkers, managers, doctors and patients. Nothing that you do is right. You are always in trouble and nothing that you do is good enough. You can do 99 things right and will never be praised for any of it. Is the one thing you didn't do correctly that you'll be called on. There is never one word of appreciation for what you do. Never. You can never spend time with your patients because you need to chart that you spend time with the patients. Sorry but that is the reality of nursing today. Oh, and good luck finding a job. If you can survive all of that and still have a smile in your face you'll become a nurse.

I'm sorry that is your experience. However if you are bullied by everyone and never do anything right, I suspect that a good deal of your troubles could be located in your bathroom mirror. If get up in the morning and the first person you meet is a jerk, you've met a jerk. If everyone you meet is a jerk, you're the jerk.

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