Nursing as a 2nd career

Quickbeam, BSN, RN · Nov 27, 2011

A little away from the original post but....

As an aging boomer and the only RN in my greater friend circle, I am now ground zero for peer questions from friends hoping to guide their kids into a career. I feel like producing a pamphlet called "I Know What You Heard on CNN BUT...". The media focus on nursing as a bomb proof career has been unrelenting. And I sit with hundreds of resumes on my desk for 2 case management positions...many from MSNs and PhDs.

I tell my friend the same thing: if your kid shows a real passion for nursing as evidenced by willingness to work as a CNA, there are worse choices out there. But please do not think of it as money in the bank, sure trip to easy street or (God help you) free nursing care for the rest of the family. Nursing has become a competitive field like most others. There will always be room for those with passion and drive. But the days of wandering in to HR with cut offs and flip flops, saying "when do I start?' are over for the time being.

Cherzilla · Dec 9, 2011

So there's no truth to this article???

http://education.yahoo.net/articles/5_best_encore_careers.htm?kid=1K9TJ

leenak · Dec 9, 2011

So there's no truth to this article???
http://education.yahoo.net/articles/5_best_encore_careers.htm?kid=1K9TJ

That article is a veiled advertisement.

Also since nursing jobs are a bit in the tank right now, I'd hope they'd grow by 2018 but I'd expect them to be pretty stagnant for the next few years.

Saija · Jan 2, 2012

Honestly, I don't think any of that even matters. The basic fact is that if your heart is not in nursing, you will never be happy as a nurse. Period. And you'll be taking the spot of a nursing student who really wants to be there, when for you it's just a back-up career. Sorry, this is a touchy subject for me because I have a classmate in a very similar situation. She has almost completed a degree in business (not sure exactly what degree) and she's told us how much she loves that and it's her "thing" and she definitely wants to do that. So why did she start nursing school? Because it's a good Plan B career. She has no passion for it, she hardly ever comes to class (to the point where her absences are causing a problem and she's having to repeat classes - she just started her first internship, about 6 months after the rest of us completed ours), she has no motivation and she's difficult to work with. We had a clinical test last year and her partner had to do both tasks because she couldn't. She also mentioned that she thinks it would be great to directly get promoted to a floor manager and never have to do bedside nursing at all. That sort of attitude is really bad for all nurses and patients. There's another girl in my class who really wanted to have a different career but didn't get into the program and it shows with her too - people like this take up spots in the program that others would have wanted, and they slow the rest of us down when we have to do group work. In general it's just frustrating to work with someone who is not motivated and it's hard to remain motivated yourself when others are not.

I'm not saying that you would be that bad. You sound like a motivated person. But nursing school is hard and nursing is even harder. If you're just doing it as a side career, my bet is that you won't be able to keep yourself as motivated as your classmates who are passionate about it, and even if you survive to graduate, you won't make a very good nurse. Nursing is so close to people and that means that without true caring and passion for the job, your patients will always feel it. Your coworkers will feel it, too, and your classmates before them.

However, if you've been having nursing on the mind because you actually have a passion for the field and decide you might want to do it full time, that's a completely different story. But if you just have nursing on the mind because it's being advertised as a guaranteed job and good money, do the rest of us a favor and don't do it. NOT trying to be mean here - it doesn't make you a bad person or anything, it just means nursing probably isn't for you. And the patients will suffer if you do it anyway. You should do what you love, whether that's what you're doing currently, nursing, or something else. If you like the idea of doing nursing-like work on the side, you might try volunteering somewhere or doing some other kind of work that requires little to no extra education. It's just not fair to take a spot in school from someone who is dreaming of nothing more than becoming a nurse, when to you it's just a back-up plan if you can't find a job in your real passion.

Oh, and if you do study to be a nurse, but can't find a part-time job, work in your current job only for the next 10 years and then suddenly you decide to use your nursing education with no experience, my bet is that you won't be able to find a job in nursing anyway because all of your knowledge will be old (what you remember of it by then) and you won't have hands-on experience. Bad idea all around, I think. Seriously, if you want to help people you can get that same satisfaction from volunteer-work or doing part-time jobs for hospitals that don't require a 2-4-year degree. Do that, enjoy your current job, become a nurse someday if you decide that your current job is no longer satisfying.