Is Age ever a problem

[carlarenee02]

I am a former nursing student (had to quit due to finances) and i am 61 yr young.

I have never lost my passion for nursing. I have lot of obstacles against me despite my age. Finance/not employed. I do volunteer work at local hospital but i know being volunteer wont help me find job.

I do have some positive attributes like i am highly motivated, love working with people and highly intelligent. Unfort the obstacles makes it hard to be positive.

How do nursing schools see someone like me, would they tell me to give up?

Thanks

[FutureNurseInfo]

Hi there! I think if nursing is what you want to do for the rest of your life, go for it! I do not think that nursing school will discriminate based on age. However, in reality, you may have some issued getting hired based on your age. I do not want to sound insensitive; I just want to be honest. Granted I am not in the program yet, but I have seen age discrimination issues in my current job. I am a teacher of 7 years. I remember the first job I ever gotten. I was so excited. Later I learned my job was meant for a more experienced, seasoned (hence in their 40s-50s) teacher. I learned that I was cheap, and the salary that more experienced teacher would have earned had been split between another newbie and I.

On the other hand, many companies will not care for your age, but rather look at all the wealth of knowledge you will bring into their companies. So, yeah, go for it and do whatever it takes to reach that goal, no matter the age.

[DS22 MS]

I hope you're right. 47 here.

[NICU Guy, BSN, RN]

Years ago people stayed with the same employer their entire career. Now, an employer is lucky to keep an employee for 5 yrs. I see a lot of new grads start FNP school shortly after being hired or put in 2 yrs and start travel nursing. So, if they can get 7+ years out of you, they are doing good compared to other new grads.

[DS22 MS]

I was at my first job out of grad school for 16+ years. I hope I can be with a great hospital for 5 years minimum or as long as we work well together. It's all about the right fit.

[FullGlass, BSN, MSN, NP]

Just apply to some schools. I started my ABSN at 53. Your maturity can be a real asset in nursing, but make sure you can handle the physical demands of nursing. Best wishes.

[Green Tea, RN]

I don't think nursing schools will discriminate you on age. When I was a nursing student (in a BSN program), 2/3 of students had a non-nursing bachelor's degree already and being a traditional student was in a minority group surprisingly. I had classmates like 58 and 60.

In regard to employment, I think age does not matter as long as you can do the same job as other nurses do, in my opinion. But you'd better be aware that many nursing jobs are physical demanding. You may have to keep moving over your whole shift like 8 or 12 hours.