I hate nursing

RhodyGirl, RN · Dec 4, 2008

Hmmmm.....question for you, OP---
You stated "It's not like I don't already have a BSN from another university"
A B.S.N. is a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Why would you be attending an A.D.N. program if you already have a B.S.N.? If you have a prior Bachelor's Degree, you would just refer to it as a B.S. or a B.A.
As for advice....seems pretty cut and dry. If you hate it, don't do it.

I saw that also, but realized quickly that she must have made a typo.

I agree though, if you truly HATE the field.....do something else. Which is why I suggested working with her previous degree. IDK. Just throwing ideas out there.

Natingale, EdD, RN · Dec 4, 2008

Its unfortunate that you feel this way, you are in a position where a lot of people are willing to give up their right arm for.

I really hope one day you will come across a situation where you get that fuzzy feeling your peers get from helping someone else.

Edited to add:

I also think you should continue and get your license, only for the simple fact that one day instead of "prettylittlenurse" you might become "oldbigsinglenurse" and might have to fend for yourself. At least you have a license to fall back on, it happens everday..might even happen to me (engaged to an architect)

Asherah, BSN, RN · Dec 4, 2008

...I really only started the program because I was bored...

I think this is the key here. You didn't have a passion or desire for nursing or health care by volunteering or having exposure within the field prior to entering nursing. I don't understand why some people feel that it is a career that will grow on them, either you enjoy it or you don't. Your peers who enjoy school and look forward to what they will be doing are not pretentious, they merely promote a positive attitude in their learning.

Its just unfortunate that you've decided to take another student's position who would be appreciative of their nursing education and be able to be an asset to a patient care team.

APRN., DNP, RN, APRN, NP · Dec 4, 2008

" i keep hoping that all the pretentious people in class with their over enthusiastic "i love nursing" attitude will be non-existent in the workplace. "
lol!! your wish is granted. just make sure that you work in a really, really busy med/surg unit (or any other unit for that matter) with a really bad manager.
best of luck to you.

Speed Freak · Dec 4, 2008

I don't understand why some people feel that it is a career that will grow on them, either you enjoy it or you don't.

I learned this when I took my first job after the Army. I got a job as a Police Officer. Being a cop is alot like being a priest. If it is not a true calling, you will HATE it. I did and quit in disgust after a year. Got nothing against cops. Having been one I have a deep appreciation for what they do, but it was just not for me. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

nmsumurse · Dec 4, 2008

I have the opposite of your problem all passion, bad grades (well only in principles of all things:banghead:). Obviously your an extremely driven and self motivated person if you can get through nursing school(with good grades) without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of achieving a nursing career.

shoegalRN, RN · Dec 4, 2008

I will say that I don't HATE nursing, but some days I don't LIKE it very well.

I was in a dead end job with the phone company for 14 years before going to nursing school. You want to talk about HATE? Try sitting attached to a phone for 8-10 hours a day, hearing people yell and scream at you all day long because their phone got cut off because THEY didnt pay the bill. And on top of that, you got management mirco managing your every move, it was like they were the FBI. And on top of that, you had a poor union who started up a bunch of mess, but couldnt back up not ONE employee. Talk about a hostile work environment! And yes, I HATED this job with a passion. But I stuck it out for 14 years because of the security it provided for me and my son.

Some days, I don't like nursing. I didnt like clinicals some of the days this past semester. But there was some days that I did and do ENJOY clinicals and work (Nurse Intern). But the good days far outnumber the bad ones.

If you don't like nursing, you can use your degree to do something away from the bedside, like administration, or pharmacutical sales, or some kind of corporate setting job within the health care industry. All is not lost.

Good luck to you!

tryitagain · Dec 4, 2008

well, you could be like me. i hold an ad in nursing but did not pass the exam,some 23 years ago. i was devastated. then about a year ago, when my son began looking at colleges, i decided a degree is a terrible thing to waste and i really did love nursing.

so here i am at 48 trying to study on my on (with the help of an exam prep book) so i can retake the nclex. god, i hope i can do it. please, you just need to graduate ,pass the exam and then decide what you want to do.

missjennmb · Dec 4, 2008

Sometimes, when we're in stressful situations, like nursing school, or having family and friends all expecting something from us, we have trouble seeing clearly. I know I do. Before you throw in the towel, lets think about this a little bit more.

What is it that you don't like about nursing? What kinds of things DO you like? What is your previous degree in? Why aren't you in that field any longer? What, if you could write your "life plan" out for the next 10 years, would you be doing?

Start by answering those questions, if not here, than for yourself, and see how you can marry what you want with the tools you have available to you (husband's decent income, two degrees, ect) My hospital has a 9-5er IT position that requires a nursing degree, but just works in IT. We also have a variety of administrative/grant/teaching/billing/ect positions that don't have much to do with nursing, but require a nursing degree. What about school nursing? Thats completely different and the hours are great. There are a lot of positions that you could get an edge up on due to your degree in nursing, especially if you have the financial ability to take your time in finding it.

I, too, started considering going back to school out of boredom originally. But somehow my higher power was looking out for me, because I found my calling in caring for others, in a way I never expected. Perhaps, once the fog clears, you will have that as well.

I would also suggest letting EVERYONE know right now that you are going to take x amt of months off when you graduate. It sounds, to me, like you need a break. After you've been home for awhile, you might remember why you wanted to go back to school in the first place.

JStyles1 · Dec 4, 2008

something seems very fake about this thread

IvyIV · Dec 5, 2008

Maybe when you start your orientation and start working you will start liking it. Is it clinicals that have soured your enthusiasm?

I have days when the last thing I want to do is go in and be upbeat and enthusiastic, but when I get to the hospital I mentally try to leave any bad feelings behind at the door...99% of the time by the end of the day the good feelings just sneak up on me and I can't help but like it. Please just try to look for one positive thing in your day that made you feel good even if you had a terrible day...

solneeshka, BSN, RN · Dec 5, 2008

Okay, stop, breathe, don't panic. Is it "nursing" that you hate, or is it "med-surg" nursing that you hate? You sound a lot like I did several months ago! Have a bachelor's in a different field, went to nursing school because I couldn't take anymore of my previous field and we needed to be able to put our son through college somehow when the day came. Went through all the work of pre-reqs and getting in and getting started and half-way through my 2nd semester of the ADN program, I thought "What have I done?" I hate clinicals, what am I going to do when I'm done with school and I'm doing this *full* *time*?!?!

But then something really wonderful happened: I got an externship in an ER last summer. It was a fluke thing, I never would have figured myself for an ER person. I'm methodical and detail-oriented, which is one reason why med-surg clincals are so frustrating for me, there just isn't enough time to do all the things we're being taught that we're supposed to do. But in the ER, there was. I know it's counter-intuitive, but this was my experience. The thing about the ER is that you're just treating whatever it is that the person came in for, so you're not worried about their maintenance meds because you're not giving them, you're just giving whatever the MD in the ER orders for their c/o. You're not giving them a bath, you're not feeding them dinner, you're not ambulating them TID, you know what I mean? Your care is much more focused because you're just there to get them stabilized and then move them on to wherever they're going next, whether that's ICU or med-surg or home. I don't want to get flamed, I'm not trying to make it sound like it's easy or simple, it's not, but I found it to be completely different from med-surg in a way that totally clicked for me. I absolutely hated med-surg clinicals to the point where I, too, considered leaving the program, but it was like my love for nursing went technicolor when I worked in the ER. It was like hand-in-glove for me. Please consider the possibility that you just haven't been exposed to the right area. Med-surg nursing is very rewarding for the nurses who love it, and there's a reason why that's where we do the bulk of our clinical work, it's necessary to be exposed to those skills, but it's just not for everybody.

I've found L&D to be similar to ER in the ways that I described above. Post-partum is somewhere in between, you might really like that. In the OR, your focus is completely different from med-surg, you're really focusing on the patient-advocate role and documenting the procedure, you're not so much directly involved in patient care, which some people like. PACU is another area where your focus is very different from med-surg, you're caring for patients at a time that is very critical for them, it's very challenging, but it's also more focused and not about ADLs. Same with cath-lab, strikes me as being more scientific and not so procedurally oriented. School nursing these days has a lot of potential, room for lots of teaching, completely different from med-surg. Psychiatric nursing is another area that's completely different from med-surg, your skills there are more intellectual than procedural, your involvement with the patients is more verbal than (literally) hands-on. You could work in a doctor's office and do a lot of teaching, assessing in a community-based environment, very different from acute-care.

By all means, get the degree, you've worked this hard, what's another year? This is what I told myself: In five years (or 10 or 20), I will not regret being an RN. Whatever it is that I'm actually doing, I'm not going to be sorry that I *didn't* quit nursing school. And it turns out that I was going through a slump, it worked itself out, now I know what I want to do. I may get into the ER and totally change my mind, but I've learned enough about nursing to know that there are plenty of other alternatives that are all unique in their own ways. Going into something like pharm sales is an option, but I'm not even talking about that. Staying with being a clincal nurse still offers so many different options, all within a medical environment. If you have the option of travelling, you could work on supervising clinical trials, I have a friend who does that. You could do home-health and develop long-term relationships with patients and provide specialized care that way. There are just so many avenues that you probably haven't been exposed to yet. Tons of possibilities! Any of which may address the concerns that you have, even if you can't really specify what your concerns are. Hospice nursing can be very, very rewarding for people who are comfortable with death issues, that's another area you might think about.

If you're doing well enough that you have the theory down, please consider the possibility that you really are in the right field, now you just need to find the right career. Enthusiasm and passion are great, but they wax and wane. I feel like I love nursing but I have to be honest, it's not because I have a burning drive to be a servant and save lives or make a difference in the lives of my patients. Don't get me wrong, these are good things, and I do feel them, they are definitely attractive to me and things I like about nursing. But really I'm doing it because it feels like home, it just feels like what I'm good at, like it's the right place to be. I hope that makes some sense. But the thing is, it didn't feel that way in med-surg. It didn't feel that way until I got into some of the other areas. NICU? I'd do it in a heart-beat. I may have to do med-surg right out of school in order to get into a specialty unit, and if I do, I will appreciate it for everything it has to teach me and give it 100%. But I will also know that I have a goal at the other end of that time to move into what I really do feel is a calling. Just be still and listen! Your call will come! Ask around what other people are doing or are interested in, float to whatever other areas you can. As they say, it's like Mediaography, you'll know it when you see it!

I really feel for you, I could have written your posting not too long ago, but now I feel completely differently. If nothing else, do not drop out. You will be glad you stuck with it, even if you don't use it. But I bet you do use it. Keep us posted!