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Discussion

Is nursing for me ?

So I've been a nurse for over a year now and I am not liking it. Before becoming a nurse I was a chemist and I enjoyed it . my plan with nursing was to work for a pharmaceutical company as a nurse doing clinical trials. That has been super hard to get. So far I've had the following jobs :

CTSDU- 3 months , I left because it was hard finding childcare for 12 hour shifts

Ambulatory care - 9 months - I enjoyed it but I only was paid 21/hr not enough money and awful benefits

dialysis- 1 month ... absolutely hated it . Start time 5 am and just didn't like it

currently I am in skilled nursing / rehab for acute care geriatric patients. Hours and pay are ok but I don't like it . I'm the only RN so I'm responsible for staging wounds , admissions, and when/of state comes my documentation and patients are who they will look at. I'm just tired of it

I would love to work from home and I have applied and so far nothing .

So what should I do ? Does my resume of "job hopping" look awful? I haven't gone back to chemistry because most offers have been contract and I don't want that .

I wish I would have done something like engineering or accounting where I can actually get paid and have job stability. I already have two bachelors so I know I won't go back to school (money, time, too many student loans).

What should I do ? I no longer like my current job but I've only been here 4-5 months.

Featured Replies

  • Expert

You're not going to like this ... but I think you need to get serious about nurturing a career rather than hop from job to job looking for a fantasy job that you love, pays well, and fits your family needs. Most of us spend our whole lives never getting that perfect fantasy job. What happens in real life is that we find a job that is "just OK" and then we invest a lot of time, effort, tolerance, and patience to make it work for us. You seem to leave a job as soon as you discover it does not match your fantasies.

Yes, your job-hopping looks awful -- so much so that it is unlikely you would be hired by anyone with a really great to job to offer. You will be unlikely to win out over the competition of the other applicants for any job that is really great. So ... you need to stay where you are for a while and invest in making it better for a while. Try to get along with your co-workers and develop a great reputation that will help you get a high quality next job in another year or two. Use the next year to develop a great professional reputation and to look around to figure out the type of job that will work best for you. Then after a year or two, after you have built your resume and developed a strong professional reputation, and earned strong recommendations ... you can pursue whatever type of job you think will suit you better.

It looks like all you have been doing for the last year in your nursing career is finding fault with all your jobs and leaving. It doesn't look like you have accomplished anything positive that would make a good impression on a potential employer. Use the next year to accomplish some positive things that you can use to get hired for something better.

  • Author

I agree with you on so many levels I just wonder if nursing is not for me . Before nursing I had years of longevity in the chemistry field and still have many great references from that . Even in chemistry I was ok with things that weren't always perfect. I don't know maybe it just isn't for me

  • Expert

OK ... so you liked your chemistry career ... but apparently, you didn't like it enough to stay with it. Think about that. Even though you say you liked it, you still left it. What will happen if you go back to chemistry? Will you like it enough to stay? Or will it not be perfect once again ... and once again, you will leave.

Perhaps you need some counseling to figure out why you are never satisfied with anything enough to stick with it. You sound a little depressed.

  • Author

If you read my initial post my reason for going into nursing was to be able to do clinical trials for a pharmaceutical company .

  • Expert
If you read my initial post my reason for going into nursing was to be able to do clinical trials for a pharmaceutical company .

That was you hope ... but why did you want to leave the chemistry job you already had?

If you read my initial post my reason for going into nursing was to be able to do clinical trials for a pharmaceutical company .

You went into the profession for the wrong reason. My experience has been that when pharmaceutical companies hire nurses, they have years of experience in the field. They are not fresh out of nursing school, or a year or two in. Targeting a specific job is seldom realistic.

As far as your spotty work history, you would probably not be hired by one of my interview panels. We look very closely at work history. If someone has had a lot of jobs in a fairly short period of time and none of them were promotions, there is generally an issue - either the employee can't commit to the job, or has difficulty accepting supervision, or some other issue. We don't hire people who are unlikely to stay.

  • Author

Because wity a bachelors in biochemistry I had to make a choice in order to go further in the science field ...my choice was to become a nurse so I could do research and clinical trials at the same time. That's the part of nursing I am most interested in

  • Author

That's interesting I still get offers . Most recently cardiac icu and cosmetic surgery. Most people seem to be more interested in the fact that i was a chemist than what I've done in nursing. I do want longevity somewhere for sure, but it hasnt affected anything thus far.

Do you have any connections in the clinical trial world?

That's interesting I still get offers . Most recently cardiac icu and cosmetic surgery. Most people seem to be more interested in the fact that i was a chemist than what I've done in nursing. I do want longevity somewhere for sure, but it hasnt affected anything thus far.

What an attitude you have there.

You may get offers but not the offers you want & you may never get the offer you are longing for if you continue to job hop & don't settle job into one job for more than a year.

Trust me, I have job hopped as an LVN & it bit me in the orifice.

Try to get an entry-level research position (non-nursing), and work your way up from there.

You're not going to like this ... but I think you need to get serious about nurturing a career rather than hop from job to job looking for a fantasy job that you love, pays well, and fits your family needs. Most of us spend our whole lives never getting that perfect fantasy job. What happens in real life is that we find a job that is "just OK" and then we invest a lot of time, effort, tolerance, and patience to make it work for us. You seem to leave a job as soon as you discover it does not match your fantasies.

Yes, your job-hopping looks awful -- so much so that it is unlikely you would be hired by anyone with a really great to job to offer. You will be unlikely to win out over the competition of the other applicants for any job that is really great. So ... you need to stay where you are for a while and invest in making it better for a while. Try to get along with your co-workers and develop a great reputation that will help you get a high quality next job in another year or two. Use the next year to develop a great professional reputation and to look around to figure out the type of job that will work best for you. Then after a year or two, after you have built your resume and developed a strong professional reputation, and earned strong recommendations ... you can pursue whatever type of job you think will suit you better.

It looks like all you have been doing for the last year in your nursing career is finding fault with all your jobs and leaving. It doesn't look like you have accomplished anything positive that would make a good impression on a potential employer. Use the next year to accomplish some positive things that you can use to get hired for something better.

What a fantastic post. Loved it.

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