New Student Nurse = Nervous

[biancal257]

Hey all, 

I'm a first time poster and was hoping you all could offer some advice. Lately, I have been bombarded with information about how toxic/impossible nursing is on social media, particularly on sites like TikTok, Instagram, etc where it almost seems to be a trend to post videos on how much nurses absolutely hate their careers. Many of which end with "if you're considering being a nurse, DON'T do it". I've made it through pre-nursing and am starting as a brand new student nurse this fall and I'm worried that this will all be for nothing. I know this job is very tough but I'm super discouraged and concerned about how negative the info I've seen has been. So...how much of this really is impossible to do? I've wanted to be a nurse for a long time. I've been through plenty of awful/abusive/toxic/minimum wage jobs and finally am able to pursue this at 28y/o. I thought this would allow me to help people and do something fulfilling with my life and now I'm not so sure. Hopefully, there is more encouraging information out there than what I've been seeing lately. Or maybe not, who knows! That's why I'm here.

Thank you for any help you guys can give! Sorry if this isn't the way to do this or if I've posted in the wrong place! ?

[biancal257]

17 minutes ago, JKL33 said:

This is a difficult career. I love the work of nursing and the core values of nursing. I could be happy forever doing the work of a nurse and interacting with my patients according to nursing principles. But I'm not gonna lie, it has become less and less possible to perform and interact according to my own expectations as my career has progressed, due to the increasing influence of outside forces (bureaucracy, limitation of resources, business needs/greed, etc). I would caution anyone against believing that the stressors are due to Covid--they aren't.

I do think you should have a very clear picture of what you are getting into. You want to help others while doing fulfilling work. That's what many, many nurses want, self included. But have a picture of what that is going to look like. It isn't a lot of mopping brows and having prolonged therapeutic conversations that change someone's life. There are a lot of entities interested in making nurses' work just a series of never-ending tasks. We are very often treated less like professionals and more like tradespeople or even just plain old workers.  There are ways to operate within all of this and do a decent job despite the obstacles. It is also possible to feel fulfilled with the work even though it is difficult. There's a better chance of feeling fulfilled if you have realistic expectations to begin with.

Personal opinion/advice: Start thinking now about whether you consider it necessary to work in a hospital; whether hospital nursing is the only thing that will make you feel like a real nurse. I advise against that mindset. There is a lot more to nursing and many more areas where nurses can find fulfilling work.

Work hard in school and good luck!

Thank you so much for this response. I feel this way too, I feel like my chances will be better at succeeding if I find people like yourself that can positively lay out the realistic expectations I should be prepared for! I would certainly consider working as a nurse outside the hospital, in fact I may even prefer it. I just figured I would have to pay my dues in a hospital first.

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

17 hours ago, biancal257 said:

WOW I didn't even realize I could do that, I always thought it was a separate major. Oh man, thank you! I need to look into this. This could actually be my back up plan.

I have no idea what the various options / structures are to pursue this, but I’ll bet there are a lot of of options. Universities also have support service departments for faculty and researchers to use to prepare graphics for their publications, so maybe you could hook up c that somewhere whether you have a specific med illustr degree per se. Good luck!