Quick Background: 35 yo male. My wife is an OR nurse and has been her whole career. I have been reading the posts on this forum for a while and wanted to see if anyone would share their views. I have been accepted to Law School and am not sure the 60-hour weeks away from my family are acceptable but I would love the autonomy the work provides. The person I was before I started the journey of becoming a Lawyer is much different today. Money was the end all, to be all. Now I am leaning more towards what I can give, than what I can get. Because of this shift in thought and my wonderful wife I have been considering becoming an RN.
The first thing people usually say is that being an attorney or being an RN are so different how can I even consider the two. I contend that both professions exist to help people in their time of need. They both demand that you give of yourself and your compassion. But I think that you have to have a killer instinct in one of them. I will let you decide which.
Let me get to the issue at hand. I seem to hear everywhere that there is a nursing shortage and that hospitals are clamoring for nurses. Just this morning my wife calls me upset that yet again the hospital in a moment of genius has decided to take something else away from the nurses in the OR. The nurses have always had a morning break of about 15 minutes in the morning usually around 9 to take care of bathroom breaks and maybe a cup of coffee. The Docs complained to the hospital and the powers that be have decided, "No more morning breaks." Now I only share this story because to me it has been the same story I have heard from her and the other RN's I have known. It seems the hospitals value the RN's so very little and yet the RN's are the backbone of the institution. In other words I have never received a call or been told by another nurse, "Hey guess what the hospital gave us." But I have had many, many phone calls and conversations about what the hospital has decided to take away.
Even in the information sessions given by the local nursing colleges that I have attended there is an undercurrent of disdain for the prospective students. When I consider this together with the knowledge I have gleamed from current RN's it seems that the valuation of nurses is far below what it should be. My concern is that we all know s*** rolls down hill but it seems an unseemly amount lands on the nurses.
Is my perspective skewed? Am I seeing something that is not there? Am I not seeing something that is there? All of this information is from the females in my life, could that be coloring my perception? I just want to do something that at the end of the day I am proud of. I have went on long enough I really look forward to your responses.
"No matter the lack of tools, we are expected to carry on as if we had all the time and supplies in the world, with the threat of termination or losing your license if you mess up constantly looming over us. "
If there is anything that bothers me about being an RN it is this quote. It seems that I have heard this many times. People are constatnly scared of losing thier livelihoods. Being humans we are fallible.
I will post this here to see if I get any responses if not I will make a new thread.
It seems to me from the research I have been doing that the differences between 2 departments in the same hospital can be dramatic. Even the same departments in different hospitals can be like night and day. My wife has been in the business for almost 2 decades and worked at least 10 different places and has only really enjoyed 2 or 3.
RN1989's reply about autonomy is pretty much right on. Nursing is way stressful sometimes. But, so are most jobs that pay anything. It sure beats what I was doing before.
My wife has been in the business for almost 2 decades and worked at least 10 different places and has only really enjoyed 2 or 3.
The older I get (be 44 very soon) the more my values change. Whether I enjoy it is down the list a ways (it used to be very near the top). I'll be OK if I just don't hate it most days.
youknowhowwedoit77
12 Posts
Quote from RN1989
"No matter the lack of tools, we are expected to carry on as if we had all the time and supplies in the world, with the threat of termination or losing your license if you mess up constantly looming over us. "
If there is anything that bothers me about being an RN it is this quote. It seems that I have heard this many times. People are constatnly scared of losing thier livelihoods. Being humans we are fallible.
I will post this here to see if I get any responses if not I will make a new thread.
It seems to me from the research I have been doing that the differences between 2 departments in the same hospital can be dramatic. Even the same departments in different hospitals can be like night and day. My wife has been in the business for almost 2 decades and worked at least 10 different places and has only really enjoyed 2 or 3.