Is nursing REALLY that difficult?

All these responses are just telling me how hard and stressful the profession is. Maybe I shouldn't become a nurse after all...

I'm actually not discouraging you. There are few things you can do that make as much money as nursing right out of the gate, and absolutely nothing with benefits this good - I'm just telling you to be prepared for the stress.

For the record, my other four jobs that were much less stressful all paid $15/hr or less. In general, the higher you go up the pay scale, the worse the stress gets... and it's awfully hard to pay student loans, a mortgage, etc. working at McDonald's or Walmart for minimum wage. I lived off of $10.50/hr for four years, and it was awful.

There's more to consider then just the difficulty and stress of a profession when you're planning out the rest of your life.

Compare that to a different employer who gave us 3 weeks of vacation, 14 holidays, and about 14 days of sick time per year.

Fourteen holidays!??? We got like three!!

All these responses are just telling me how hard and stressful the profession is. Maybe I shouldn't become a nurse after all...

Well, only you can answer that. The nurse life isn't all daisys and roses and we want you to know that before you start down that path. Honestly, I think some here would recommend exploring some other health care jobs as alternatives - such as echo tech, physical or occupational therapist, speech therapist, or pharmacist. But others would say to explore nursing because it can open doors to a lot of different opportunities besides floor nursing. Its good that you are asking questions and trying to find out what the career is like before you start and educational path. I wish that I had done that more!

You're in high school- how would you know you love the adrenaline rush that comes with the job? What kind of jobs have you had at this point in your life? I'm honestly curious...

THAT difficult depends on who you are, how old you are, your physical condition, your focus, how the rest of your life is going, your capacity for empathy, ability to think quickly, and many other factors. Of course, I don't mean 'you' you, I mean 'anyone who is a nurse, or is thinking of becoming a nurse'. There are something like 3 million nurses in the US currently, and you might get 3 million answers if you polled them all. But in general, I think yeah, it's hard, it's not for everyone - but at the same time, you can do it if you want to.

As for the 'whiny' notion, you can't put yourself in someone else's shoes yet. There are plenty of things most of us can complain about in our jobs. Just for a few small things: I had yet another shift today with only 1 aide instead of two. The supply guy is ill, so I had to scramble to find things. I had a new guy who's a bit of a handful. I also got some friendly comments and compliments from a couple of residents. Hopefully, the good part(s) counterbalance the bad part(s), but every day is different.

It's 12 hours of caring for sick people. You'll laugh, cry, panic, overthink, miss breaks, lose your appetite, be ravenous, get yelled at, not sit for hours, and who knows what else. It isn't easy. You have people in your care from start to finish who you are responsible for. By the end of the shift (if not before), you're spent. However, it's a great job and we do what we do for a reason. There are good aspects, but you discover those as they come, from quiet moments with patients to huge laughs with co workers. We are with patients during a journey, whether it's for a cut finger, a massive heart attack or end of life care. Not everything can be explained in a non whiney article. Burnout is important to recognize because we give so much of ourselves. Good luck with your future.

Some hospitals will allow people to shadow a nurse for a day. perhaps your school counselor could help you set something up. This would give you a better idea of what nursing is like. I really had no idea until I started clinicals. Nurses have a lot more responsibility then I thought they had and they can be spread pretty thin. Also check out your colleges for open houses, usually these allow you to tour the area of the school you are interested in and learn about the program. Mine have a few info nights a year specifically for the nursing program. The nurses I've had all seem to enjoy their jobs, though in every job there will be those "days". Its also important to remember people are more likely to complain then compliment so don't assume that just because most of the articles you read are negative, that most nurses feel that way.

I would love 4 days off...however, the day after working is all about recovering, it isn't really "a day off"...and if your shift is split like ours usually are (not 3 days in a row) then often 2 of those off days are spent recovering.

Is it really that difficult? Well unless you assume that all those nurses that you read about really are just whiny children who are lazy...maybe there is a reason why there are so many articles/posts about nursing. My nursing instructors basically told me to expect to cry a lot until you had at least one year experience on the floor. What other profession gives you a warning like that? (it was true though I was usually able to make it to my car before the tears fell)...

Can I add, that "adrenaline rush" that you seem to seek won't turn off anymore on its own so I am anti-anxiety and depression meds to be able to go to work. I love what I do but I realize it isn't healthy. I always have too many patients and am on hyperviligent status that something isn't going bad in a room that I haven't had time to check on. A fellow nurse was just diagnosed with 30 ulcers. Yes, we do help people...we also face people who seem determined to kill themselves inspite of our interventions and care, and we lose people too, often people that we have started to care about....and even harder yet, when you go home, you usually do not find out what happened to your patients because HIPAA means we can't look at their files if the are not currently in our care (need to know only). I found out my patient's precious little baby ( a micropreemie) died several days after I stopped caring for her from a NICU doctor who came to check on one of my babies. When my patients die, I often don't know because they are transferred to more critical units before they pass away. It is hard wondering if that brain bleed you caught made it or died...especially after you spent several days learning all about her children and their life as you cared for her.

Nursing is a hard job. Harder than most people realize. I can't imagine doing anything different now but honestly, I wish I had picked a different field that allowed for better balance.

I work night shift in critical care, and yes, it is that hard. Three 12 hour shifts sounds like a breeze, until you realize the gravity of what occurs during those 12 hours. Also, even if your unit allows you to self-schedule, there is no guarantee that you will be able to work all three days in a row, so you may find yourself working Monday, off Tuesday, working Wednesday, off Thursday, and working Friday. This has happened to me many times, and I'm sure it will happen again in the future. In that case, especially working night shift, you feel like you are working all five days that week, because the only thing you can do is stay up all night, and sleep all day in hopes of keeping yourself on a night shift schedule.

Also, I work nights by preference, and have done so for nearly five years. I don't see myself going to day shift at any point in time, however, the human body is not designed to naturally stay up all night, and sleep all day. I often find myself exhausted on my days off, and sometimes all I want to do is lay on my couch. I am sure that I would feel "more human" on day shift, but 12 hour day shifts are still physically and mentally exhausting.

In your post, you mention a desire to work in the emergency department. Like you, I relished the idea of the excitement of the ED as a new graduate nurse, and I have worked in the ED as both a new and experienced nurse. The excitement and rush eventually wears off, and it did so for me fairly rapidly. You quickly realize that the majority of ED patients have no need to be in the department, and you rapidly tire of taking care of patients who could easily be treated at an urgent care, or in a doctor's office. In addition, the rush of high-stress situations will eventually also lose its appeal. I worked in a level one trauma and burn center, and I spent many nights in the ED seeing the worst of the worst. A good trauma team runs like a well-oiled machine, and this removes a lot of the rush from the situation. In addition, you will eventually notice that seeing the horrible things that can happen to the human body begin to take a mental, emotional, and spiritual toil on you. It was for this reason that I recently left the ED, and returned to the ICU.

Critical care is an entirely different beast, and it cannot really be compared with the emergency department. The stress is different, the work is different, and the thought processes are different. In critical care you will also be routinely exposed to the many horrors that can befall the human body, but you will face that every shift for many shifts, as opposed to the few hours you must deal with it in the ED. I currently work in trauma ICU, so my nights consist of caring for bodies mangled and battered from various injuries both accidental and intentional.

In my position, the biggest stressors are staffing and patient acuity. We are often short-staffed, and we find ourselves trying to do the best possible job for our patients with inadequate staff, supplies, and resources. My ICU does not employee techs (most ICUs don't in my experience), so nurses also find themselves bathing patients, changing sheets, cleaning up urine and feces, turning patients every two hours to prevent pressure ulcers, performing mouth care every four hours, helping patients who can walk do so, and performing numerous other tasks. This is done in addition to tasks that must be completed by an RN (administering medications, assessing patients, providing education to patients and families, inserting IVs, catheters, NG tubes, feeding tubes, performing wound care, titrating drips, managing invasive lines, and communicating with nurse practitioners, residents, and attending physicians). All of these responsibilities are more than enough to keep you busy for the entire shift, but they become even more stressful when coupled with inadequate staffing and resources.

In addition, I frequently find myself physically sore after work. The combination of standing on hard concrete for hours at a time without sitting, walking nearly constantly, and turning, lifting, and moving patients all shift is a recipe for disaster. I work with numerous nurses who have required knee replacements, rotator cuff repairs, back surgeries, and other procedures as a result of injuries from work, or as a result of the many years of wear and tear on their bodies. I am in my mid 20s, but I often find that my back, knees, and feet are sore for days after my last shift ends.

The job doesn't just entail physical stress on the body, it also involves a great deal of mental stress. In the ICU, I am constantly watching my patients for any sign that things are beginning to deteriorate. I am constantly focused, hyper-vigilant, and aware of even the smallest changes. In all areas of nursing, but in critical care especially, this is required. The small change that you miss may very well be the thing that goes on to kill your patient. This hyper-vigilance, coupled with frequent patient assessments, and nearly constant critical thinking is mentally exhausting.

Finally, there are the many frustrations that come with the job. The understaffing, the lack of resources, the doctors that refuse to listen to you about patients, the family issues, the abusive patients (both verbally and physically), the demanding patients and families who cannot be appeased, the routine process failures which make your job unnecessarily difficult, and the list goes on and on. These things, coupled with the physical, mental, and emotional stress of nursing are what make the job so difficult.

I would encourage you to look up the PTSD rates for nurses. There are many nurses who are permanently scarred from the horrible things that we see and do on a daily basis. I can tell you that after spending time in burn ICU, trauma ICU, and the emergency department, there are things I will never forget. Screams of agony, mangled bodies, inconceivable amounts of blood, the smells of burnt flesh and hair, the look of parents who have just lost a child, and the feeling of utter failure when a patient dies despite all of our efforts. This job isn't simply a nicely paying way to work three days, and get four days off every week.

You also mention wanting to make a meaningful contribution to the world, and I think this is great. But I must also caution you. There are plenty of mornings where I come home feeling as though I have tortured a patient all night, as though I am helping to simply prolong their life, knowing that they will never have a decent quality of life ever again. There are also mornings where I come home, and feel that I have miserably failed a patient. Maybe they suddenly coded, and we could not resuscitate them, or maybe they suddenly deteriorated, and we desperately worked to stabilize them. In those situations, I come home wondering what, if anything I missed. I beat myself over what else I could have done, if I did enough, and if I could have caught an issue earlier, and possibly prevented the things that happened.

I do not hate my job, and I really don't see myself ever doing anything else. I have always wanted to be a nurse, and I am happy with my decision, but I am a different person now. Nursing has changed the way I see the world, the way I think, and, quite possibly, my entire personality. I would encourage you to shadow a nurse in the emergency department, or the ICU. Both of these areas will give you the experience of high-acuity, life or death situations, and will allow you to see the true reality of nursing. This could help give you a better idea of if you really want to be a nurse.