38yo male, VERY non-traditional potential nursing student... advice?

[RomaniGypsy]

Okay y'all... giving this a shot for my first thread. I've "lurked" for a while, searched a bunch of threads... can't find something all that close to my situation, so here goes.

Turning 38 in the end of this month. BS in Applied Physics / Computer Software w/minor in mathematics, graduated 2001 w/3.36 GPA (3.39 major GPA). 24 credits of college work since then with As in all classes, to bring cumulative GPA close to 3.5. SAT / SAT II / GRE scores all very high, not sure they'd be necessary, but they're there.

Married, one newborn child, wife (33yo) has always had an affinity for things medical (to the point where people have told her for years that she should be a nurse or a paramedic). She is going to start nursing school as soon as she can.

I've spent most of my working life as a professional musician. My wife and I have worked primarily as performing musicians for "senior facilities" (nursing homes, assisted living homes, senior centers, etc) for the past almost 5 years and prior to that I spent several years as a private teacher of music lessons. Prior to getting with me, my wife worked office jobs. She has no education beyond high school.

This will be a dramatic career change, for sure! Where I'm concerned, I'm investigating all facets of medicine and want to see which is the best fit, if there are any that are good fits.

So why medicine for me?

1) My wife had three major surgeries in 2015 and there were many times when I was not impressed with the "bedside manner" of the doctors. Obviously they were competent, but they seemed somewhat uncaring beyond that. For example, I had a ton of questions and they didn't seem all that interested in answering them. I can't recall the same being true of nurses... though I haven't kept score, my recollection is that they seemed to be more inclined to answer questions in sufficient detail. I'd like to be able to help people understand these difficult situations.

2) My wife and I have an "end goal" comprising the following, in no particular order:

-ability to travel when we want, and stay put when we want (we've been full time RVers and our next RV is currently parked in our back yard, awaiting transformation from its current incarnation as a school bus... and I've known about "travel nursing" for some time now)

-ability to help people in need (we'd love to be able to do disaster relief, among other things, and I figure that being a nurse will provide not only necessary skills for such, but also enough money to be able to help needy people in other ways even if not medically)

-establishing a "commune" for the purposes of seeding some real change in the world (that requires money, and also it would be a huge draw if we could tell people "there are nurses on site")... okay, I'm a hippie, I admit it!

-providing a good childhood for our son and whatever other children we may have in the future

3) I have the intelligence to handle it. Without bragging, let's just say that I recently saw an infographic on IQ distribution for people in the medical profession (it went on to say "such as doctors", though it didn't specify nurses) and I am significantly above the 90th percentile line. Though I know intelligence doesn't predict empathy nor suitability for any particular career, at least it'd seem to predict that I could hack the requisite education.

4) I'm a rather "young" 38, and I anticipate living a long life. It seems like everyone in my family, on both sides, who doesn't smoke nor get killed tragically lives a life of above-average length. So, even if I can't be a nurse until I'm in my 40s, I'll still have plenty of time.

5) Being a nurse seems to provide the ability to travel, especially if you are a willing to serve "underserved" populations. Those are my people. I've always been an "underserved" person myself, in many ways, and yet I grew up in an area that might best be called "overserved". I know the contrast, and I know what I like. Many years ago, I chose to get out of where I grew up and go to more rural places. So when I read that there is a high demand for nurses in rural areas, I realized that I wouldn't be short on work were I to go into this field. (Not to mention, I could do "travel nurse" work as mentioned before. There appears to be no shortage of such opportunities!)

6) If my wife becomes a nurse, it'd be something we could share, to an extent at least.

7) I've always been a bit of a hypochondriac, and my dad is even worse. People generally fear going to the doctor / hospital because they think they're going to get bad news. I believe I can deliver bad news in a way that people would be more likely to accept, if I ever had to be the one to deliver bad news. Does that mean that they'll like getting it? No, but if you want to get better, you need to hear it. Having been the guy who is afraid of going to the doctor and even more afraid of going to the hospital, and having known people who are worse, I could treat people accordingly.

8) I really want to be respected. Yes, there is a bit of vanity in this for me, but how many people go into a career field entirely altruistically? I've always been the type to work hard and become the best at what I do, and if I do that and still don't get respect (which is the way I have felt for years in my current profession), it's going to burn me out. At least when you're working in the medical field, generally speaking, people come to you or are brought to you because they want you to improve their health... so they're willing to listen to you. Are there some who don't listen? Sure. I've known a few. But they seem the exception rather than the rule. I see elderly people interact with their nurses all the time in my line of work, and the only ones who seem likely to go against what the nurses tell them to do are the ones who suffer from dementia. The others - they might go against what the nurses say, but to my not-so-well-informed mind it would seem that that's the exception rather than the rule.

This is becoming long-winded, isn't it? I'll probably have to break this up into multiple topic-specific threads. If I did become a nurse, I might just go all the way to becoming an NP, even if that means (with new requirements coming into play fairly soon) that I'd have to get a DNP degree. I read that the nursing approach to medicine is significantly different from the physician approach to medicine, with nurses typically able to take more time to talk with their patients than doctors do (true? false?). Obviously I'm a talker, so perhaps that attests to nursing being a good fit.

So what do you think thus far?

[0.5GPA, ADN, CNA]

I'm a 36 yo male. I got a year down and a year to go in my ADN program. I went to college before and got a bachelors in business (never used it)

Married no kiddos

You can do it. Clearly you have the intellect for it. It is a major time commitment though. You will have to work that out.

Some of the things you mentioned are reasions I am working on getting into this line of work (travel, helping others ect)

Personally I do not want to be an APRN seems like everyone and their sister wants to do that or be a CRNA but I do want to be the best and most certified I can be in what I want to do. I am going for my BSN afterwards but I dunno about after that. The more education you can get the better for sure.

I think as age was mentioned in your post Nursing has the potential to be a career that can go with you as you age.

I mean if your a construction worker or a cop you don't have time on your side get hurt and you may not get to see retirement. It seems to me that not really the case with Nursing.

[RomaniGypsy]

Thanks, all, for the information so far. I really have been reading it - just had a lot to do recently.

One big question I have, given what some of y'all have said, is this: Exactly what is the fundamental difference between the nurse's philosophy of / approach to medicine, and the doctor's same? It looks to me like if you go all the way to get a DNP, you can be called "Doctor" and you can operate in some cases with full autonomy as a medical practitioner. Yet, you're a "nurse doctor", not a "medical doctor".

I have noticed some HUGE differences in attitude between nurses and doctors, at least through online forums, and I will be putting up another thread to porifice those differences... but what of the medical approach?

[Oldmahubbard]

I've been an NP for some 15 years, after working as an RN for about 13. Back in the day, when I was studying to be an NP, there was no money in it. Literally, you were lucky when you graduated if you even broke even with it, after paying your loans. You went into it, basically because you wanted to do it and you were sick of floor nursing. Which doesn't take long to get sick of.

Things have improved a lot since then. Some people do make real money, 150k or more, and mine is one of the many states that have gone independent. The autonomy is in the NP degree, not the DNP, doctor title, although that may change as MSN programs convert to DNP.

Supposedly we were more holistic. We were not the "rush rush make money" clinicians. We were the nice ones that would hold your hand if need be. When I did my clinical in 2003, my NP preceptor saw about 15 people a day, and the MD at the same clinic usually saw 30. This was not because she took twice as long to make up her mind. She always got out at 5, and he didn't. Still there was a difference, where she was expected to counsel educate pts.

This has mostly gone by the wayside. Wherever you work, your numbers will be watched very closely, and you will be expected to have similar productivity as the physicians after a few months of experience.

So, on average, I don't think we are much more holistic anymore. I do think we are less paternalistic, which is a good thing.

To be fair, the average MD has some 200k or more in loans. And they have to eat. And they didn't sacrifice all those years for nothing.

You will find that many physicians are egotistical to the point of being narcissists. This is unfortunate, but you will learn to live around it. Nurses also have a high rate of personality disorders, which you will observe at some point in your career. And stress brings out many things that wouldn't be noticeable if someone were just sitting at a desk.

As a result of such personal factors and not their education, NP's are noted to be more down to earth and easy to talk to than physicians. It might be a stereotype, but there is truth in it.

I can only answer about the difference in the 2 approaches from my own experience. And I must admit, as time has gone along, I have tended to become more "medical" and less "nurse-like", because this is where the money is.

I take a few extra minutes sometimes with people, more than is strictly necessary. I am in LTC facilities, so I don't have people waiting in an office. I work at my own pace. As an example, I have a young man age 35 who is dying from a rare neurological disease. He is still oriented and reality based in his thinking. I sit down with him almost every week for 30 to 45 minutes, even though I only get paid for 20.

If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it. And you couldn't do it with everyone, obviously, and keep up with the workload. But the reality is that few LTC pts are capable of such a conversation.

I could be wrong, but most of the physicians I know wouldn't do something like this. Again, it's only 20 minutes out of my week. I am not Mother Theresa!

A lot of ink and internet typing could be wasted on discussing the difference between the 2 philosophies, but overall, most of the difference in practice between the 2 professions is quite small and based on personal factors.

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

It is my experience that nurses tend to rely slightly less on just pure science and to consider more of the holistic factors prior to making treatment decisions. Nursing education focuses less on what is wrong with the patient, but rather on how the patient, mind and body, are coping with what's wrong and a wider range of potential interventions for anything that isn't balanced. We are also educated on early indications of things going wrong during treatment and how to intervene, rather than waiting and treating at the time of crisis. That is our role.

Nurses who go on to be advanced practice naturally bring this mindset with them. There is a greater focus on prevention than physicians often utilize and a much greater focus on how the patient as a whole are dealing with the illness and/or the rigors of the treatments prescribed for the illness. This generally leaves people with a "better impression" of nurse practitioners in terms of overall experience. The approach is often experienced by patients and families as being more connected and more caring, because the assessments take in more than just the disease process going on. ie: the APN above who spends 45 minutes talking with one of her patients. This is a therapeutic intervention that is difficult to be compensated, but nonetheless is an important part of the patient experience and well being. It is a rare physician to acknowledge and act on this fact. They are there to cure. When there is no cure, they tend to be there less.