I want to be a nurse..what is it like?

TopazLover, BSN, RN · Oct 19, 2008

Nursing is hard work. It is rewarding work and yes, you can help people. I can't begin to tell you all that LPNs do. Better if you can volunteer and see it in action.

Every job has ups and downs. What you read in our posts tend to be venting about the bad. It is not all bad. Talk to a career counselor about possibilities in health care. You could do many things in health care. Nursing is just one area. Do all the testing and profiling you can to be sure nursing is the right fit for you.

I am not trying to discourage you. As a young person you have a long life of work ahead. It is only fair that you look at all the choices out there.

I personally hope you become a nurse, but whatever you choose, best of luck. Let us know your choice after you have explored.

GOMER42 · Oct 19, 2008

There are so many specialties in nursing (med/surg., OB, ER, etc.) that you would get a different answer for every person you were to ask.

Nursing requires lifelong learning, critical thinking, and a thick backbone. It is difficult and challenging. I suggest you contact your local hospital and try to set up an observation/shadowing day to get an idea of what is entailed in a nursing career before you ship out to college majoring in it.

Good luck to you.

Flightline, BSN, RN · Oct 19, 2008

One thing to keep in mind is that nursing is acutally a "profession." It's not just a job. The difference being the level of responsibility placed on you because of your state license. And it's not like being a barber (who is also licensed by the state) because while you both have responsibility placed on you because of your license, your profession is far more critical and risky in terms of the harm you can do. Sometimes, the responsibility of the profession can be crushing.

Often times, in order to maximize profits, hospitals give a nurse too many patients on a shift to care for properly, and yet your responsibility to provide safe and effective care remains. This is one of the biggest problems with the nursing profession.

My advice to you is this: When you finish high school, wait a year before starting college. Become a CNA and work at the worst dungeon of a nursing home you can find in your area. Then decide. If you can't wait a year before starting, then just work on general prerequisits that could apply to any major and work as a CNA. Make sure you work in a dungeon nursing home, not a nice one. Make sure you see nursing at it's worst, because the investment in nursing school is hard and it takes up time you could have spent toward a degee in business.

I'm a nurse because I have no other choice. I've come to believe it's my karma, if you will. Yes, I'm sure of it. I hate it. I love it. I need it. I don't want it, but I must have it. There is nothing else I can imagine doing with my life.

rph3664 · Oct 19, 2008

I'm not a nurse, but I want to tell you to make sure that this "career center" is accredited. If it isn't, you will have a harder time getting licensed and you may receive an inferior education (and an expensive one to boot!)

A community college or a hospital-based nursing school would be your best options, and in some cases, your employer may pay for some or all of you tuition, or pay you back if you work for them.

There is no way to know what you want to do for a living than to actually get in the trenches and do it. And you know what? If you find out that being an LPN isn't your thing, you could use that certificate to support yourself quite well while you get that business degree! It certainly pays better than Starbucks or waitressing.

You have come to the right place for advice.

p.s. A 2-year business college degree is basically worthless beyond giving you credit hours.

ErraticThinker · Oct 19, 2008

There's a lot to consider. pay is something to consider, i agree. But as a nurse, you'll never have trouble finding steady work. It varies depending on where you are. I work at a big medical center so I make more than say a small community hospital in the rural midwest. But I work 12 days a month (3 days a week) and make a comfortable living and can take on overtime if need be.

Now finances aside, nursing is so not the profession to go into just for money. It's a helping profession. People will annoy you (physicians, patients, families, other nurses). You will see and do things that most can't even begin to imagine unless they're nurses too haha You do eventually toughen up ( best way i can phrase it) but it's still draining emotionally and physically. Nursing school is tough, so don't start until you're sure its what you want to do.

reasons why i love what i do? Well I like that i can move anywhere around the country and find work pretty quickly. If i get bored with my specialty there are any number of other things I can try as a nurse. It's ever changing because of research and i'm constantly learning new things. It's difficult to explain, but physicians get all the glory on tv, but the patients tend to remember the nurses more than anything.

Be wary of some of those career centers though. If you want to pursue an RN after, you have to make sure that those credits for classes will transfer to a college or university. You can start volunteering now at a hospital to get a feel for the environment and then become a nurse's aide. That'll give you some exposure, and you can talk to some nurses too that work at that hospital.

FutureNurseSaga · Oct 19, 2008

I am currently a nursing student (well pre-nursing student). I realized I wanted to become a nurse after doing a medical career class in high school. I got my CNA certification through this class. CNA's have to do clinicals too so I got experience in a nursing home and a local hospital.

I am currently attending a community college and taking all the pre-reqs I need to to get into University MD’s nursing program.

It usually take people 1-2 years to finish all the pre-reqs to get into a nursing program, depending how fast you can go through them and how many the school asks for.

There are many reasons I have gone into nursing.

My top reason is because I like helping people and the other reasons are I like science, flexible hours, 3-day work weeks, financially-stable career, and many many opportunities to advance (with education).

My advice is that if your going to go into nursing go for your bachelor degree (4 year university) not LPN.

And since you are not 100% sure if nursing is what you want to do start volunteer at a local hospital.

Start at a community college with your pre-reqs that way if you decide to change your major you won’t have wasted a lot of money at a university or private school and can still use those credits to fulfill the general courses you need to transfer to a university.

If you have any questions feel free to pm me.

deepurple · Oct 20, 2008

hello futureNurseSaga..you have said that you had 3-day work weeks right?so i just wanna know that are you in specialist of nursing?? and i was wondering how do you get work in 3 day work weeks??

FutureNurseSaga · Oct 20, 2008

I'm only a student but I've spoken with nurses who work 3 days a week.

3 12-hour shifts a week and one weekend a month.

3 x 12 hr = 36 hr

36 hr x 4 = 144

144 + 12hr (once a month) = 156

which averages 39 hrs. a week and is considered full time

As far as I know any nurse can work that type of schedule as long as the hospital goes by 12 hr shifts, which a lot do.

nerdtonurse?, BSN, RN · Oct 20, 2008

As an LPN now in her RN program....nursing is a wonderful life, BUT...

You'll see the best and worst in humankind. You'll have days where you float 6 inches off the floor because a person said "thank you" and days where you want to throw down your badge and walk out because

you kept a drug addict from killing himself by pushing Narcan, only to have him take a swing at you for "ruining" his high. You'll be cursed, blessed, hugged, hit at, kicked at, spit at, pee'd on, puked on, and bled on.

Here's what my night was like last night.

I had a woman dying from cancer, and she's so allergic to every narcotic, we can't keep her pain free. We're hitting her with everything we can think of, and nothing's helping her. She's never going home.

I had a woman, 100 years old, dying because she's 100 years old and everything's worn out. Legs are black, hands are black due to her heart not pumping like it should, (PVD, PAD, CHF, DMII, ejection fraction is 15%)the family had a PEG tube put in and and the family wants her to be a "full code."

One woman, just a junkie. There for the demerol, nothing wrong with her. We get her every month, and she comes in positive for everything on the drug screen; she runs out of money for drugs, so she comes in to the hospital complaining of "chest pain" and then "abdominal pain" and then "headaches." Your social security? It's been spent on running every test in the book on this woman, who has nothing wrong with her but addiction.

Guy didn't take his insulin, didn't watch his diet, so now they've cut off one of his feet, and he's going to loose the other one. He's 38, and he's going into a nursing home when he gets out. His blood sugar goes from 400 to 40 in the blink of an eye.

Had an admission last night, about 5 in the morning. 46 year old guy had a small MI (heart attack) at a church BBQ, but seemed stable enough for the powers that be to decide he could come to our floor (read: ICU was full). Met the wife, met his two kids, nice family, wife fussing at the hubby that "no more cheeseburgers for you, big guy!" We complete the admission paperwork, and the unit secretary suddenly yells, "VFIB ROOM XXX!" I run down the hallway, meet the wife coming out and blast past her. Guy's unresponsive and frothing at the mouth. I hit the code blue paddle, drop the bed flat and start compressioin while yelling over the speaker for an ambu bag. We only had 4 nurses on the floor, and the other three hit the were in the room in seconds. My charge is bagging him, one nurse is dragging the family out of the room and shoving the furniture out of the way for the code cart, and the 4th (2 weeks off orientation) is gawking at her first code. I swap out with her on compressions as the code team hits the room, yanked off his gown and got the defib pads on him. We shocked him, started compressions back, hit him with every drug in the code cart, kept shocking and working the code for 45 minutes. We never got a sustained beat, we never got adequate perfusion. The doc finally called it and went out to tell the wife. She screamed "NOOOOO!" so loud I still hear it. We're all dripping sweat, worn out, my wrists feel like they're broke from doing compressions, and I'm just heart sick -- this time yesterday, that family still had forever.

I go back to check on the patients I still have left, and the drug addict is cussing me out because I didn't leave the code to give her a demerol IV, nobody took the DKA's blood sugar so now I have to push D50 on him, the lady with cancer is moaning in pain that I can't stop, and the 100 year old looks at me and whispers, "you look terrible."

That was my night.

Xbox Live Addict · Oct 20, 2008

Hello. I am a senior in high school and will graduate in may. I was accepted to this business college and was going to go because I need money. But when i thought about it, I cant just go to this college and have no interest in these courses just because I need money, I need to enjoy my career. So I wanted to do health care, like nursing. I've always wanted to be a nurse. There is this career center not a university where I can go for one year and become a lpn. Im kinda scared. I really dont know if nursing is for me. I love helping people but I need to know what it is like. The bad and the good. Is it really tough and hard? Please, nurses tell me everything about being a lpn. Im not worried about the homework in nursing school, but what about the clinicals? Is it hell being a nurse because I heard so. Just tell me exactly what its like being a nurse. Thank you so much to those who respond!

Because there are so many facets to nursing, it's very difficult to categorize "what it's like", partly because everyone has their own experiences. You will get wildly different responses, particularly from those that love nursing and those that hate it, from those that are still green to those that are longtime veterans. I suggest you contact a hospital or a nursing home about shadowing a nurse.

Taking a part-time job as an aide may give you a little insight, but keep in mind that a CNA is there to focus on the more routine tasks of patient care, and will not show you the many situations a nurse encounters which require critical thinking and well-reasoned clinical judgement - and sometimes that critical thinking must be done quickly during an emergency.