Nursing or Occupational Therapy?

MN-Nurse, ASN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

I'm a student trying to decide between nursing and occupational therapy. I did a semester of nursing school and I did really well and I loved working with patients but overall didn't love it and I feel like I would like the rehabilitation side of things more. I also feel like OT is a lower stress job than nursing. Any thoughts?

Do what you dig, but depending on where you work, OT can be a pretty high stress job. The ones I've seen working in nursing home rehab and acute care settings definitely don't have it easy.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

do the best of both worlds and shoot for working in rehabilitation nursing. there are many, many, many settings, from inpatient pediatric to sports med to outpatient geriatric ortho, and all stops in between. you'll collaborate with ot/pt/slp and physiatrists (the best medical specialty for collaboration and true teamwork, imnsho), and make a real difference. :twocents:

futureRN_Anastasia · Dec 9, 2011

My advice would be, go and shadow an OT and go shadow a nurse. I was thinking between PT, OT and nursing, and it made a world of difference to me, when I actually managed to shadow all of them and see what I like best. I am very interested in ergonomics (I worked in the field of software ergonomics for many years), so OT was a strong consideration.

I ended up choosing nursing for a few reasons:

1. There are a lot of different variations of what I can do and settings where I can work if I get bored for example.

2. I liked the holistic approach, and the fact that ergonomics can be useful anywhere.

3. I like the excitement, and the knowledge that nurses have about all sorts of diseases and ways to treat them. :)

SingDanceRunLife · Dec 9, 2011

I'm interested in working in a school district if possible, and definitely outpatient and with children. I have no interest in acute care.

Flo., BSN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

Where I am we have a huge shortage of OTs and surplus of nurses. Check what the market is in your area.

Been there,done that, ASN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

Shadowing is an excellent idea.

OT is still very much hands on care. You will be teaching the patient to dress themselves, toilet themselves, etc.

My understanding is OT pays quite a bit less than nursing, so compare salaries for sure.

Good luck.

lindarn · Dec 9, 2011

Shadowing is an excellent idea.
OT is still very much hands on care. You will be teaching the patient to dress themselves, toilet themselves, etc.
My understanding is OT pays quite a bit less than nursing, so compare salaries for sure.
Good luck.

I don't know where you heard the OT pays less than nursing. OT is a Masters Program. They may alot more money than nurses do. They keep their numbers low to maintain that.

JMHO and my NY $0.02.

Lindarn, RN, BSN, CCRN

Somewhere in the PACNW

SingDanceRunLife · Dec 9, 2011

In NY (according to nycareerzone) OT pays less than nursing, but only by about $4000-5000/year. Money isn't a huge factor in my book anyway.

Quickbeam, BSN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

My OTR friends are all in doctoral programs right now. They do work very hard but all are part time. They tell me it isn't easy to get full time gigs in OT. Most are in high hourly wage categories with no benefits. Just my experience with my pals.

JSBoston · Dec 9, 2011

I LOVE being a nurse (most of the time) but if I could go back in time, I'd do PT or OT. I used to work in an LTAC and I would literally KILL myself and not eat my lunch until I got home from work. Every second was pure stress and there wasn't enough of me to go around. We had a TON of pt/ot at our hospital and they did work hard, but they had scheduled times with the patients and they always always had lunch together as a group, while I didn't have time to pee. They had time with the patient's progress notes than I did. The main negative about them IMO, is they had to step out of the room when codes happen and I like to be around for learning and helping the patient.

MN-Nurse, ASN, RN · Dec 9, 2011

I'm interested in working in a school district if possible, and definitely outpatient and with children. I have no interest in acute care.

Be careful about narrowing your focus early on. You have to work where the demand is. Often your dream job is not available upon graduation and you have to build your experience in a different area.

I am fairly sure all the OTs I worked with at nursing homes didn't list it as their first preference.