Occupational therapy or nursing?

[confusedteen]

Hi everyone. I am a senior in high school and I will attend college in the fall. I'm having a hard time deciding to do occupational therapy or nursing. If I decide to do nursing - I would like to become a nurse practitioner.

So, in my university there is an occupational therapy program where I can get my master's degree in 5 years rather than the normal 6 years, and I think it takes 6 years to become a nurse practitioner?

Can anyone tell me what normal work day is like? Hours stuff like that. Pros and cons to both careers? What the salary is like?

I live in Missouri so if anyone knows what the job outlook is like?

[txstudent6, BSN, RN]

It depends where you work. If you work at a doctor's office, you'll have "normal hours" but hospitals are either 12 or 8 hours shift and are either days or night. You don't work everyday as a nurse. You work 3 times one week then 4 the next. I considered being an OT but I didn't want to have a master's and only get paid about $5k more than a bachelor in nursing. I'm from Texas nurses make 65k average up to around 100k if they do over time, OTs make about 70-72k. Hope that helps! Also you don't have to have it all figured out just yet :) all my life I wanted to be a nurse but when I graduated, I wanted to do OT then my first semester of college, I knew I wanted to for sure be a nurse. Take general classes or ones that apply to both your first semester and you'll figure it out! Good luck :)

[elkpark]

For what it's worth, the OTs I've known have been a lot happier about being OTs than most of the RNs I've known have been about being RNs.