On a positive note.........

Please share how you made some choices/career moves within nursing that put you in a position that is now utilizing your talents and is a great fit for you.

Too often we stay in jobs that are making us miserable. Give us some stories about how you improved your work situation/career.

My background - 1st year non-traditional nursing student. Feeling very frustrated right now and would like to know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Need some positive inspirational stories to anchor onto to help pull me through the rough spots.

There's a book I would recomment "Just a Nurse". Nurses in a variety of different expressions of nursing are interviewed and tell about the pleasures and frustrations of the work. Keep in mind that what you're seeing of nursing now is only a small sliver of the whole profession. People have found all sorts of little niches for themselves outside of the mainstream. After 25 years I still want to take care of patients directly. Even Allnurses only speaks for less nurses than we have in my state!

I was just thinking about this the other day. When I was a kid, I played "nurse", devoured Sue Barton books, idolized Tom Dooley(a doctor who worked in the jungles of Laos before the Vietnam era), loved babies and wanted to write books. I grew up, FINALLY went to nursing school in my thirties, worked in L/D, worked in the NICU,wrote 4 "Dummies" books on a variety of medical subjects, and went on a medical mission trip to Romania. I've satisfied all my childhood dreams through nursing--what more could anyone ask of a career? Am I glad I'm an RN? You betcha!