Help...husband discouraging me :(

[Faye1]

Hi all...I'm hoping you can give me some advice (and hopefully encouragement) about becoming a nurse. My husband (who is a physician) is discouraging me from becoming a nurse because he says the patients are "so messed up." I know what he means by this...he means that they have alcohol/drug problems, can be agressive, the families are dysfunctional, etc. I know it's not going to be easy, and there will be times when I will question why I ever pursued nursing. I am not him, and in fact we're quite different. I have a deep desire to help others, as well as learn how the body works. My question is, is nursing all that bad...or can you get beyond the bad stuff and find it generally rewarding? Thanks for your input...

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

To ChayaN: Simply "asking" someone such as Kathy123 why they have such negative viewpoints of nursing, particularly when they enter a nurses's forum and proceed to denigrate our profession, is not "shutting them up', as you say. This IS a forum, isn't it? I don't see any threads where anyone asks this depressed nurse to "shut up".

First of all, Kathy explained (quite articulately, in my opinion) why she has a bad view of nursing. I don't know why you as a nurse should be getting so defensive about her comments... you're not the one who's responsible for the staffing issues that Kathy and many other nurses have had to deal with. I know a lot of nurses are happy, but I do think prospective nurses need to be realistic about what they'll encounter as a nurse. She is not denigrating the profession of nursing, but rather the conditions that nurses must work under, and she is frustrated by the fact that many nurses prefer to silence those who complain about said conditions rather than try to change them. (Something that I clearly see on this thread.)

Here's an example of a response that I call "shutting up":

And you are in nursing,Why!!! I hope you are never my nurse or my families or any person that need help. Sure, nursing is hard, life is hard. I don't go to work (still after 44 years) to see how many breaks I can take or how many times I can go to the bathroom. I go to see how the pt I had before is doing now and when I cry is is generally with a family or pt, can be happy or sad.

Basically this poster is implying that anyone who complains about working conditions on their job and insists on having needed breaks is a bad nurse who doesn't care about her patients. Sorry, this is an example of the type of enabling that Kathy is talking about.

[Yuliya3]

To OP, I would say to get a better idea of nursing, try to explore it more. For example, why not volunteer at a hospital, if you have time for it. You could arrange with volunteer department to rotate through different floors. That will give you a some knowledge of work nurses do daily, see if any areas appeal to you, get a feel for it. At my school, we were required to do some amount of volunteer work or have prior healthcare experience before starting nursing program, and I think it help me a lot with my decision to go into nursing. You could also look into getting a job in healthcare field, that does not require much training: CNA, unit clerk, secretary in medical office.

Good luck.:typing