Nursing School Advice

[TheMedicineBunny]

Lately, I’ve been wondering if nursing is the right path for me. A little background about me is that I do have mental health issues and I have had trouble sticking to things in the past (school, jobs). However, I’m super passionate about nursing and have wanted to be a nurse for the past 4 years. My question is what is nursing really like? Can you be an introvert nurse? Should I go into nursing? Is it a good career path for someone with ADD?

[gere7404, BSN, RN]

I guess you can be an introverted ICU nurse and since they seem to really like having sedated patients.... You do however have to work with patient's families, which could be pretty hard for an introvert. A lot of nursing involves working with other people, many times in the worst moments of their life, so being comfortable interacting with others in difficult situations is an important nursing skill.

The basis of the nursing process is paying attention and noticing things, which could be difficult to do with ADD. State boards can also suspend or take the license of nurses if their mental health issues affect their ability to provide safe care to patients.

You can get a good feel of what nurses do by working as a CNA -- CNA classes are usually pretty short (~2 months at the most), and not prohibitively expensive. I'd probably work as a CNA for a little while to get a feel of the profession and see if you enjoy patient care before jumping all in and becoming an RN if you tend to change your mind on what you want to do a lot.