Is Nursing right for me??

Well, CrissyH, only time will tell, but I wonder if you're just a little tired of your current position and are not ready for some more challenge. The kind of challenge that nursing school and the subsequent licensure that working as a nurse can provide.

A CNA with 11 years of experience is nothing to scoff at and assures you have a solid foundation of knowledge and experience on which to build.

If you love being helpful yet the passion is gone from your current position, maybe nursing can give your passion a shot in the arm it needs! (Pun intended.)

Good luck and the very best to you, CrissyH!

Oh- BTW: Welcome to AN.com!

Perhaps identifying what you find distasteful about working as a CNA might help.

I say that because, after 34 years of being a nurse, I continue to perform duties that I performed as a CNA. Just a little while ago, my work wife Eleanor and I provided hygienic measures to a geriatric psych patient. Providing hygienic measures for geriatric patients was something I was doing in January 1984 at my first job as a CNA in an LTC facility.

This is an excerpt of a post I made as to why I love being a nurse. Maybe it will give you a little insight, CrissyH:

...I love being a nurse, what the title stands for, what the work entails, and what satisfaction I get feeling like a contributing member of society.

I am by no means, a religious person. However, the basic principles behind Christianity are worth following. Doing techy things like working in surgery, or administrative things like being a nursing supervisor were great and I feel blessed to have been able to work in those areas. But when I stoop down to help a geriatric psych patient put on their footies, I think of how Jesus washed the feet of his Disciples. Here this great man (or whatever else you may believe), humbled himself. He made himself equal to them by making himself less than them, but in reality, he was above them.

That doesn't sound the way I wanted to convey about how I think and feel bout nursing, but maybe you can get the gist. We are servants to those with which we provide care, but we are esteemed professionals in a respected field. So, whether I was first scrub on a lumbar laminectomy with a second scrub, two surgeons, three back tables and a mayo stand, or wiping the butt of an incontinent geriatric psych patient, I was doing a job that I love: providing comfort and care to another human being

And that's what I love about nursing...