Not as sure as I used to be...

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Hi!

To start off, I am currently a pre-nursing student who is about to finish up her prerequisites. I was originally aiming to get into nursing school next spring. I have worked as a psychiatric nursing assistant for about 3 months, I have many family members who are nurses who I have talked to, and I've even shadowed a nurse in a hospital. I've been wanting to become a nurse for a few years now, since I started high school, but honestly, I just don't know if its for me anymore.

I love working with patients; I really do. It's the reason I chose nursing over med school. I wanted to have more patient interaction. However, from what I've seen from working daily with nurses and shadowing nurses at other hospitals, I feel like even nurses don't get that much patient interaction. Because of administrators not hiring enough staff, everywhere I go, it seems like nurses are pushed to their limits, and their patient interaction time suffers because of it. They are spending over half of their time doing paper work, and when they finally have time to be on the floor, they are usually so short staffed that they have to rush through things and patient time suffers because of it. I don't know if this is the type of career that I'd like. It seems to be such a problem, particularly in my and my family's area, and my mindset is that if I'm going to be spending half my time doing paper work, and not seeing patients as much as I'd like, I might as well go to med school. I am extremely interested in learning about medicine. I work with doctors as much as I work with nurses, so I know the difference between the two. I am not going into this blindly. I do eventually want to have some provider power, even if I get my BSN and accomplish that by becoming an NP.

I guess the point of this thread is to just get advice from others who are in or were in my same situation. To those who chose to go on with nursing, do you regret the choice? Are you happy with your choice? Do you feel like you're making a difference? Were there other paths you wished you would have taken? I'm contemplating switching my major to psychology and going to med school, and with each day I go to work and see the nurses I work with running around and rushing, that idea becomes better and better.

Any advice or opinions would be very welcome.

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I've been a nurse for over 20 years. I do not regret it, but it is extremely difficult. Daily rushing around like mad and very high stress are a daily part of nursing.

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I've been a nurse for over 20 years. I do not regret it, but it is extremely difficult. Daily rushing around like mad and very high stress are a daily part of nursing.

Right, and I understand that. I didn't go into this thinking everything was going to be nice and rosy. I don't know, I guess I just thought there would be more time for patient interaction then there actually is.

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Depends on what type of nursing you would like to eventually work in that would determine this. If you become a hospice nurse, there's time. If you work in an MD office or some other type of nursing that doesn't require you to have 8 patient load a day, there is time.

You could also think about getting a BSN then going into a LICSW masters. This would give you some patient interaction that you would like.

Best wishes!

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In my experience as a bedside nurse for the last 3+ years, I still get more patient interaction by far than the docs. They depend on us getting to know the patients so we can alert them to changes. We also find things out about patients that they may not have thought to ask, or things that just come up in conversation with patients and families. I have had many heart to heart talks with families, given hugs, offered comfort. When you spend a shift with a patient who's having a rough time, you hold their hand and comfort, while the docs come and take a look and write an order.

I have seen docs spend time when a patient is first admitted, when they are diagnosed with something, about to have a procedure, or when it's time to talk about DNR or hospice. Otherwise, it's the nurses.

I work peds, and at my facility the max number of patients any nurse can have on any unit is four. It's often very busy, but we do get time to know the patients most of the time. I work even higher acuity so I get 2 or 3 patients only. I change, turn, bathe, comfort, and medicate as needed. You can't get any closer to personalized patient care than that.

Yes, we are often rushed. There are a thousand things to do, and often no one to help do it. Our patients are complicated and require many back to back meds. There is a certain satisfaction in learning how to manage your time, have a thousand things on the list and at the end know that most of them (at least the very most important ones) got done. At the same time you will carve time out of your day to talk to the one patient who needs it most, because that's what nurses do.

Nothing against the docs, but they have many, many patients to follow through the shift spread throughout the unit or facility. They check vital sign trends on the computer, depend on us to call for changes in the patient, and make decisions based on our input and assessments. Some of them are even at home or doing office hours, and we become their eyes, ears, and hands.

If you want to be a nurse who can really get to know patients over a long period of time, and have the time to spend with them, consider home health nursing or something like it. I did a brief stint (6 months) in home health care and had one pediatric patient for the entire 9 hour shift week after week.

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I had never thought about hospice nursing until about a week ago when I met a family friend who worked in that field. It is definitely something that has interested me since then, particularly because of the time I would hey to spend with the patients.

I hadn't thought of home health nursing, however. That really would be in line with what I'm looking for. I've just heard some bad stories about it.

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Pediatric home health might be more what you are looking for. It can still be difficult, and you still have to sometimes deal with difficult families. I have even heard of nurses who go to school with their patients.

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Specializes in Hospice + Palliative.

If you are looking at just hospital-based nursing "on the wards" in say, med-surg, then yes - pt interaction is going to suffer at the hands of paperwork. But there are so many options in nursing (which, FWIW, is why I chose nursing over being a physician or a PA) - you have the flexibility to decide that you'd like to pursue home health care, public health (I know several county-employeed public health nurses who enjoy long-term, significant patient interactions), hospice, etc - you've got that ability. Medicine nowadays have become very discipline-focused, so if you become a physician you'll choose speciality and then it's very difficult to move away from it down the road.

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OP, look up at the yellow bar at the top of the page and click on Specialties, then check out some of them. Take a day or two to do that. :) Ask some questions there. I always told my students to ask every nurse why s/he did what s/he did, and also why s/he didn't do what s/he didn't do. Lots of people can tell you why they like something, but it's when they tell you why they don't like something that you can make a decision. Also realize that you will be exposed to many different kinds of nursing in your education, and most people end up doing something entirely different than they envisioned when they applied.

Examples:

"Mother-baby nursing! I love it! What better opportunity to get a new family off to a good start-- a good birthing experience, establish breastfeeding, and all that. And when a new family has a good birth experience, they'll come back to our hospital for care later on in life." :heartbeat:

"Mother-baby nursing, yeeeeecccchhhh! Tits and fundi and peripads and screaming brats and if I never see another whiny entitled ***** with a six-page birth plan and a mother-in-law it'll be too damn soon." :yuck:

And second, or third, the recommendation to consider grad school if you don't go to a regionally accredited school. You need to know the difference.

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing...ow-900804.html

Then realize that the chances are excellent that you will change your mind about what kind of nursing you want to do half a dozen times before you even finish school, then it is very likely that you will have work in several specialties, if not many, by the end of your working life. Don't get too fixated on anything today. Keep your eyes, ears, and heart open, and see what happens. I always say it's good to have a path to follow to a goal, but keep checking your peripheral vision for other interesting things.

As an example, the last three kinds of nursing work I have done, and the work I do now, love, and anticipate retiring from (at my age, that's a fair expectation) didn't even exist when I was in college. :yelclap: You just never know.

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Depends on what type of nursing you would like to eventually work in that would determine this. If you become a hospice nurse, there's time. If you work in an MD office or some other type of nursing that doesn't require you to have 8 patient load a day, there is time.

You could also think about getting a BSN then going into a LICSW masters. This would give you some patient interaction that you would like.

Best wishes!

At an inpt hospice near me, ratio is 10 pts to 1 nurse, 1 CNA. They also get the home care triage calls eves and weekends, and are required to chart on all pts q 2 hrs. Very busy.

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I don't want anything to come across the wrong way here; I don't mind being busy. I don't mind being stressed beyond belief. I know there are bad sides to this job and I embrace that. My concern is not that I'll be busy or stressed per say, just that I won't get as much patient interaction as I'd like, because patient interaction was why I chose nursing over anything else in the first place. I think I will go post in some of the sub speciality forums that I'm interested in like one poster suggested and see what they have to say about the matter.

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