My doubts about a future in nursing

[NewJA]

I have decided to post my doubts about a career in nursing. I will present a serious of doubts and drawbacks, and what I am after is some people who may dispel erroneous or self limiting cynicisms. I originally was attracted to three things: 1) The potential to actually help people find or maintain real, lasting health. 2) The high job availability & schedule flexibility, short contracts, etc.... 3) The compensation & related factors - traveling opportunities, bonuses, etc... Having learned more about nursing by reading about it, watching nurses, discussing it, living with a nurse, and so on, I have found #1 to be a total illusion. The only chance I would have to do this whatsoever in the capacity that I am talking about would be either as a nurse practitioner (would have its limitations as well), or in some sort of private practice or other private venture. It appears that any other position would be exactly the opposite of what I want in #1. I have found that the stress and various colossal drawbacks of the job (and the nursing school itself for that matter) grossly outweigh this factors of job availability or compensation. To be honest, I believe that the western medical community and entire health care system is an absolute disaster, more conducive to keeping people ill than to true health and healing. The entire system is designed to manage the mess that people make of their lives through living dangerously (smoking, bad eating habits, sedentary life, etc.....) as well as to deal with emergencies (which I literally could not deal with, due to the toxic level of stress that would put in my life). I thought I woould bring a different perspective and approach to the field of heallth care, and teach patients to live healthy, and show them a degree of compassion and patience and caring that is so woefully absent in America's health care system... But then I watched and listened, and realized that this is probably the same fantasy with which other people approach the career. Any such illusions are smashed on or before the first day of work. Having said that, I am having trouble imagining myself in a position where I run my but off dealing with an absurd patient:nurse ratio and working as what appears to amount to what I now think of as a sort of blood pressure slave..... monitoring machines, giving meds, managing pain, and answering patient requests and complaints as well as doing paperwork - all far beyond the limits of how much of this type of stuff any given nurse should be reasonably expected to deal with.... I have also noted that it is extremely obvious that the majority of the education required for the RN, while it SHOULD be extremely important to the job, is in fact totally useless or superfluous. When it comes down to it, the nurses job is comprised almost entirely of the above list of very exhausting and stressful chores..... Which I could learn how to do in a 1 year program..... doesn't require or justify 4 years of schooling - I've even heard that from R.N.s. Now do that in the typical 12 hour shifts from either 7 pm too 7 am, or from 7 am to 7 pm.... (I would never do either of those shifts, not for a day, let alone indefinitely) ...well let's just say that before we get too that final issue, I have already long since talked myself out of it. Sure, as a travelling nurse, I could make 40K in 6 months and take the rest of the year off to do whatever I pleased. But could I handle even one week of those 6 months? I consider the quality of my life on a day by day basis - I don't make myself suffer for 6 months at a time while looking forward to my time to do what I want. With all those obstacles I have focused on, I have to admit that there could be many opportunities where the majority of those challenges would not be present. These may make up only about 3% of al nursing jobs, but with such a ludicrous shortage, it would be inevitable I could get such a position. Take home care nursing, or administration, or starting a nursing registry, or even working in a doctor's clinic instead of a hospital. Sure, I could do something like that, IF I found such an opportunity before going insane trying to work in a hospital.... but even then, in no case is the registered nurse credentialed or legally allowed to be giving the type of holistic health counseling that I would like to provide. So, this suggests private practice as a nurse practitioner..... but that turns out to be quite a bit more schooling in nursing and much more of a long term, dedicated business venture than I am willing to commit to. I live with an R.N., and I have heard her complaining vehemently about that very shopping list I have mentioned, without me feeding any of this stuff to her first... That's saying a lot considering that she is a person who never complains about anything, or backs down from any challenge. She has just started in the job about 6 weeks ago, and she is talking about leaving already. She comes home looking so excessively exhausted and stressed that she literally looks like she was lucky to make it home at all. Her job is literally dangerous to her health, and too the welfare of her patients, and she is acutely aware of both truths such that she has nightmares about it and dreads going t o work at all. I just kind of nodded and sympathized, wondering how she could possibly have made it all the way into the first day on the job without having figured all that out ahead of the time. In fact, I had already figured out and foreseen the exact things she is complaining about, and many more, when I was only 1/2 way finished with my prerequisites. It's sad and pitiful to see her on her days off trying to talk herself into persevering and enduring, with optimism. In fact, the job is crushing her spirit and she needs to get out of it as soon as possible before she destroys herself or burns up 3 years of her life in that suffering. She talks about preparing for her future and so on.... what happened to the present?!?!?!?!?! Inevitably I can see that she will stay in nursing. She'll just keep suffering until she winds up in a position that is also terrible, but not nearly as bad as the the job she is at now.... Perhaps years into the future, she will have gotten into a relatively cushy job at the VA, or in some other unforeseen capacity that is low stress..... I can't imagine doing that to myself. I could see myself eventually doing something useful with nursing..... and it would also be very useful personally in caring for my parents or my own heath... The question is, does that make sense, and could I even endure the clinicals? ....... that was rhetorical... Indeed, I could work as an NP in my own office - just do medication management. But then, I would just loathe peddling medications to people who could drop them id they'd just live healthy, and wouldn't care at all for working in an office - to tell the truth, I'm an outdoors person. I have read that over 40% of all RNs leave the career entirely. For a person with health issues or other challenges going in to it, the career seems like a ludicrous choice, unless the person wants to stay on the academic side of things and just become a professor (where they will need 2-3X the education with about 1/2 the maximum earning potential..... and then they can take part in the system of instructing all that excessive material that I mentioned earlier.... Hmmm...... That's a no-brainer)