I want to be a nurse!!

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Hello everyone, i am a 16 year old male interested in Nursing. I am currently doing my high schooling online, which allows me plenty free time to research careers and what not that i may be interested in doing after high school. I was interested in Neurosurgery for quite a bit, but felt as though i was more into it for the money and not the job itself. Plus, have you SEEN how much debt medical school students end up in? No thanks LOL. I would like to go to college for Nursing because i feel the job will suit me better. More time spent with patients, flexible schedule, the benefits of travel nursing, as well as good pay. I would much rather spend 2-4 years in college learning to do a job i'll enjoy and still get paid well, then go to school for 14 years, doing a job i only got into for the money, as well as ending up in tons of student debt. Also i have a question. How flexible is the nursing schedule exactly? Is it true that you can work three 12 hour shifts a week or are you always on call? I love the idea of over time as well. If i felt the need to work more, that option is always there for me. Also Nurses have more flexible specialties and what not. Do you love your job? What is your work schedule like? If you could go back in time and become a doctor, would you?

I don't want to become a Nurse and be treated differently and feel like I'm at the bottom of the barrel and what not because I'm not an MD or something lol.

I am also interested in perhaps shadowing a nurse during the summer, so i can get more of a feel of what goes on and what not. I feel like it'll really benefit me.

Please do your best to expose my young mind to the career of Nursing as much as possible, It will really help me with deciding my career after these two years of high school are up, although I'm still pretty set on nursing.

Thank you for your time (:

P.S. i know i still have plenty of time to decide my career but i see no harm in researching what career i want to do after high school, and learning as much about it as i can now, then in two years. I like to know what i want to do right off the bat, instead of winging things. Plus, since i'm doing high school online, i have plenty of time to conduct research. I would just like to hear from the Nurses themselves. Thank you, i hope to be a Nurse one day!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho, ASC.

I think the best option for you is to expose your young mind to the hundreds of pages on this forum of day to day nursing concerns, stories, experiences. It's asking a lot of someone to fill you in on the entirety of nursing when it's really all here on this forum. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Good luck.

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Specializes in ICU.

Nursing is indeed very flexible. I work 12 hour shifts and it's pure self scheduling - I can work those three shifts any days of the week I like. My schedule rarely gets rearranged. It is very easy to switch specialties if I get bored. The flexibility is amazing, and probably the best part of nursing.

Nurses are generally treated well by other members of the healthcare team at my hospital, but we are treated terribly by the patients and family members. You will feel like you're at the bottom of the barrel often. If that bothers you, you should do something else. People keep complaining about nursing turning into customer service, but it's really not. In a real customer service job, often you only have to deal with an angry person for 20-30 minutes before they get what they want and leave. In hospital nursing, you have to be at the beck and call of an angry person for the entire length of your shift. The patients don't get to leave and neither do you! Nursing is worse than customer service for dealing with unhappy people. If I had known how much worse, I would have never gone into nursing, honestly. I only thought I disliked working with the public before I went into nursing. Now I know it for a fact!

Where you put "more time with patients" as a perk of nursing, I would put it as a drawback compared to other jobs in the medical field.

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Thank you for your reply. As of reading hundredes of pages of day to day nursing on this forum, i will. I had no idea there was so much information on the forum when i signed up, i only signed up to ask a question about the flexibility of nursing and if you liked your job. I then proceeded to state that i would appreciate if you could tell me a bit about your experiences with being a nurse, i never wanted the "Entirety" of it.

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Sounds like a job i would really love! Working three days a week, flexible schedule, paid well, dealing with people on a daily basis and helping them. I'm pretty sure nursing is the career for me lol

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I strongly suggest that if you decide to train as a nurse that amongst your reasons for wishing to become a nurse is the desire to take care of sick people. You did not mention this in your post. I mean that seriously. There are many unhappy nurses and a number of them do not even care about patients nor are interested in taking care of sick people with all that entails. You will find much information on this site. Do you feel as though you care about people who are sick? Could you physically touch vulnerable patients who are sometimes not co-operative or pleasant and assist them kindly and respectfully with toileting, cleaning incontinence, bathing, etc? Nursing is a highly responsible job that requires hard work, intelligence, the ability to think critically, and a strong basic foundation in the sciences, along with several years of intensive nursing education/training. Try to find out if nursing is a career path that you actually would like and have an aptitude for; you mention that you are taking your high school classes online, however there is nothing virtual about nursing, which is predominantly a very physical profession for the majority of nurses who provide direct patient care.

Possibly training and working as a CNA would give you some idea of how you feel about providing basic but very important care to patients before you start a course of education that will prepare you for a profession you may not be interested in - being disinterested in taking care of patients is not good for patients either - patients can sense whether a nurse cares about their wellbeing or not, and can pick up on a nurse's feelings when the nurse is providing care to them. Patients want nurses who are competent and caring, and they often have family member/s who will be present with them while they are in the hospital to support them; some will stay 24/7 and you will need to be able to find the patience/caring to be able to support family members' efforts to care for/help their sick loved one. If you read on this forum you will read numerous accounts from nurses and members of the public who comment in various ways to the effect that when they were sick/hospitalized the nurse/s ability to be caring towards them was very important to their healing, and you will read comments from people who experienced the opposite from the nurses who took care of them and how this affected them.

Best wishes to you, and I hope you make a good decision.

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Sounds like a job i would really love! Working three days a week, flexible schedule, paid well, dealing with people on a daily basis and helping them. I'm pretty sure nursing is the career for me lol

There you go! I went into nursing and never regretted it - I have worked in ICU/critical care and acute dialysis - plenty of male nurses in those areas.

Nursing is a great career!

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Thank you for your reply! And yes, i would love to care for sick patients in anyway i can. I want them to feel well and good, but at the same time help them feel better. I also wasn't interested in being a doctor because i feel that they only treat the patients illness instead of comforting them and what not. I would love to do this for a career and really make a difference in my patients life. I understand that some patients may not be very nice, but i wouldn't mind helping them still. I'm sure the good nursing experiences and patients certainly make up for the few bad ones.

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Thank you! I am very excited. Does having extremely good grades during high school determine my nursing career? I usually have all A's and maybe one B, but i don't want to feel stressed out and what not. I don't want to feel like i HAVE to strive to be the very best in high school, in order to be an amazing nurse. It would be nice to settle for B's in high school once in awhile instead of feeling like i need the very best grade all the time.

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Thank you! I am very excited. Does having extremely good grades during high school determine my nursing career? I usually have all A's and maybe one B, but i don't want to feel stressed out and what not. I don't want to feel like i HAVE to strive to be the very best in high school, in order to be an amazing nurse. It would be nice to settle for B's in high school once in awhile instead of feeling like i need the very best grade all the time.

Nursing school is competitive - good grades are important.

And nursing school tends to be hard but definitely doable if you are dedicated and want it...

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Specializes in Acute Care.

You sound ambitious. At 16 that is great! I wish I had discovered nursing earlier. I became a nurse at 29 and I've loved it. Every one has already answered your questions pretty well so I don't have a lot to add. Just wanted to say your reasons for wanting to become a nurse seem genuine. I love helping people- but yes- I also love my job flexibility and pay. Nursing is an excellent profession. It is demanding, requires you to be on your toes and use your brain pretty much every second of every day. You are constantly required to make critical decisions (big and small). I enjoy this aspect of my job. Keep doing what you're doing. Study hard, become a CNA, and shadow a couple nurses in different areas of nursing (if you can). I wish you the best of luck in your journey!

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Nursing school. Would i go there for 2-4 years instead of college or something? How does Nursing school differ from regular college? I realize that i could find these answers out by searching google, but their answers are usually not always very clear and leave me wondering more.

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