Is Nursing right for me?

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I posted this in the Nursing Career Advice forum... but didn't get much traffic:

I'm a 29 year old with a background in engineering. My bachelor's is in Mechanical Engineering, and I have had a successful career as an engineer working in automotive and aerospace. However, despite moving up quickly, I've never felt much passion or fulfillment by my career as an engineer.

Earlier this year, I started volunteering at a pediatric hospital in the rehabilitation and neuroscience units helping hospital staff with patient activities. I felt more more satisfaction after 2 hours of volunteering a week than I did at 50+ hours of working at my day job!

I originally became involved with hospital volunteering because I was born with a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndome (EDS). Its a connective-tissue hyper-mobility syndrome. As a kid, the local pediatric hospital system made a big on impact on me. After I started volunteering, I realized that health care would be a career that I'd be very passionate about, given my personal background.

I would love to work in an area like Rehabilitation or Orthopedics, with patients that have had life-changing diagnoses, and work with those patients on improving their function and outlook.

But, I'm wondering if nursing would be the best fit for me, given my EDS? I consider myself a normal adult. But i do know that heavy-lifting/manual labor, and repetitive tasks are not for me. Can anyone comment on what the physical demands of a nurse are?

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

There is definitely some lifting involved with nursing - of course depends much on the type of nursing: NICU involves teensy patients, outpt clinics involve mostly ambulatory folks, inpatient units usually involve the most lifting.

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Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

Just wanted to put this out there too as I had never heard of this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002439/

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Specializes in Infectious Disease, Neuro, Research.

Hi, Jonathan. Obviously, you have to pass clinicals, before anything else. Provided you survive that intact, yes, I suspect you could find a niche that would be rewarding and completely possible with your condition.

If you like peds, I would begin with the facility with which you're volunteering- talk to the nurse managers, and see what turnover is like, and it may work out so that you'd be able to step in fairly easily.

I know from my class, those of us that were working medical and/or had floor contacts, had jobs within 2 weeks of graduation.

Good luck & keep us posted!

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