People really need to stop coming into nursing

Nurses General Nursing

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None of you will like what I have to say. But let me kick the hard truth to you. Honestly about 50% of people I talk to are in nursing school or are taking pre-reqs for nursing school. This is a major red flag for several reasons. If you have not noticed, nursing wages/benefits have been on the down trend.

Pension?? goodbye.

Crud 401k 403b plans hello. Raise? LOL "sorry hospital is working out financial issues, maybe next year".

Nevermind if you work for a community/SNF agency. Yet insurance companies, medicare derived/gov agencies, and anyone else from the top 1% will continue to blast the RN as "shortage" in order to drive drones of students into nursing schools pulling each others hair out on the way to land a seat. Proof of this is, let's see (ABSN ***** ADN, BSN, diploma, LPN/LVN bridge to RN programs, RN to BSN) Why do these different routes exist? To flood the RN market as fast as possible to drive the wage, need, and profession into the ground.

Let's look at our oh so loyal CNA's. If you can find one that isn't in nursing school to be a nurse, ask them how much they make?

Look at LPN's 20-30 years ago and look at them today??

Surely the ANA and other organizations treated them with respect. The RN is next, so make sure to support your local nursing agency so they can do nothing for you. So they can be paid off by organizations so powerful that no one can say no and "not have the power to stop a bill". So they can continue to cry nursing shortage when this is not true.

RNs today are treated like children and are required to demonstrate fundamental task and other skills in inservices which were designed for nothing else but cut throat. To place blame of UTI's and poor patient satisfaction on the nurse.

If you are an RN today, your only safety net is to become an APRN if you want to live comfortably but in several decades the APRN will be under attack just like the LPN had been an RNs currently are. "OH the aging population is going to need nurses" You really think so?

Nursing homes are shutting down and now elderly people live at home with "24 hour care takers" that get paid **** wages and do things only an RN should be doing. You don't think so? Wake up.

None of this is to say that I hate nursing. I love helping people who are mentally ill, suffering from dementia, sick, or on their death beds. It is when we do great things for them that my love for nursing shines. There aren't other people standing around to reward you for your great deeds.

When the family comes in the next day complaining about everything, they never had a chance to see how well their dying loved one was cared for. Your good deeds will never be rewarded, but in a safe place in your heart.

I am just here to open the eyes of people who are intelligent and looking for a new career. I think you may find better job security else where. Invest your time in classes and money else where. Nursing is honestly under great attack right now and the future is black.

Work Cited

The Future of the Nursing Workforce: National- and State-Level Projections, 2012-2025

It's realistic if the reality tells us so.

There's a glut of everything now...everyone goes to college! Before you know it, you're going to need a college degree to be a manager at Chili's.

Specializes in CRNA hopeful with a Post-Grad ACNP.

We are already there! Saw an add for a McDonald's manager that stated Bachelors degree strongly preferred!

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.
We are already there! Saw an add for a McDonald's manager that stated Bachelors degree strongly preferred!

Unfortunately, there are some of those "well rounded" skills taught at college that may be lacking in someone who doesn't have a degree; but I will say, if one is going to be a manager; they do need to know accounting, leadership, and how to manage effective, I'm even thinking along the lines of Sigma Six training; really unsure if they teach that during orientation...but I do digress that that makes a stronger candidate; life experience or a lot if corporations are finding those with just "school of hard knocks" life experience isn't cutting it, especially when there a percentage of people that held these jobs barely graduate high school; sometimes college is the answer in terms of finding quality candidates-wife a caveat of people needing to push back for better wages, IMHO.

1 Votes
There's a glut of everything now...everyone goes to college! Before you know it, you're going to need a college degree to be a manager at Chili's.

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I've been accepted into nursing school and it's a top school. It hasn't been easy because the competition is indeed fierce to get into nursing school. Literally everyone at community college calls themself a nursing major but so many just don't have the academic chops for it. Then there are for profit programs who take these students who graduate and aren't good nurses

Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.

I remember when I graduated in 1971, people used to say to me, "Well you'll never be out of work, because people always get sick!" HA-HA-HA!

Never say "never"!

I agree that the expectation to move to find employment is a little much. It may be a good option for those with no family, but a lot of nurses are 2nd career people. Most of us in that boat have kids, a significant other that works, maybe already own their home. It's not realistic to expect people to uproot their whole lives just to find a job.

Not realistic? Really?

Ever hear of the Great Depression, or the Dust Bowl?

Yes, it is realistic. As another poster stated: it is realistic if it is reality.

In 1992 I had to move out of state to find my first position as an RN. Of my entire class, only one classmate landed a position in state, and that was at a nursing home in the middle of nowhere.

As long as people "follow the market," to determine their career path, they will be following a market created by those who hold the gold. And those people that hold the gold determine the market. That's the way it has been since Neandertal Oog told Neandertal Grog (who lost a hand in an accident involving a sabre tooth tiger) that he would share some of his own spoils with Grog if he spent all day sharpening Oog's spears with his remaining good hand.

I'm a first semester nursing student. I'm well aware that there is no real shortage, but I can't think of any other field that's doing any better. When I first went to school, it was 2005 and everyone did their song and dance saying everyone should go to college and ANY degree was a good thing to have. Well I graduated after the 08 crash and that was no longer true, if it ever was.

I had a degree in animal science with an equine option, intending to train and breed, but by this point many people had gotten rid of their horses or at least cut way back in their expenses. No more shows means no more training needed and certainly no need to breed when quality horses could be found at half the cost they'd been a few years ago.

So I weighed my options. I would have enjoyed being an elementary teacher, but my sister and husband are teachers and I know all too well what budget cuts have done in that field. Thought about business, but that is a vague field and who knows what you'll actually do with it and it probably won't be very fulfilling.

I love art and photography but again, who is purchasing fine art? And I already earned turning a hobby into a job can ruin the hobby.

So I turned to nursing. Thanks in part to this forum, I have pretty realistic expectations and have an overall feeling of foreboding as to what my first couple years will be like. Still my best option.

Though I look at my class of 70, knowing there are many other schools with classes of similar size, and wonder how the instructors can promise we will all find jobs at graduation?

I'm a Pre-Nursing student and I'm well aware that there's no "shortage" (thanks to AllNurses). I feel like this forum has exposed me to the real side of nursing. It's hard for all of us newbies though... I still really want to be a nurse. I know this isn't an easy route, but it's the one I want to take. I'm not going to choose another career simply because there's a glut of nurses. I'm going to do this, and if I have to move I will! I feel like if you really want a career in Nursing, then you can find a way to make it work. The job market is tough for lots of other jobs right now! We aren't alone!!

Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.
Kudos to you! :)

I find, along with the trend toward APRN, are those who enter nursing with the intention of never actually touching a patient. Weird way to approach nursing if you ask me, but that's what I'm noticing more and more.

Prospective students who ask about the fastest way to get to become a NP (not asking which program is better, which school is best, but what the FASTEST way is). Pre-nursing students who want to know if they really have to do any bedside nursing before becoming a CRNA. Sigh.

About 80% of the BSN students I teach have grand plans of getting away from the bedside before they ever reach it. :(

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Specializes in PACU, presurgical testing.

I read an article a month or two ago about the push for STEM education; someone actually likened it to the "nursing shortage" in terms of concern that it will run down the salaries for tech jobs. Engineering used to be a sure bet for a good income, and people were willing to work hard to get it. If this happens in STEM like it has in nursing, I wonder if it will dilute the field, water down the skill level, and reduce salaries.

Pretty much everyone I went to college (NOT for nursing) with planned to move somewhere away from our little college town to get a job (and most of us were lucky to get any job at all given the economy we graduated into). The difference in nursing grad expectations might be driven by the fact that there are a lot of non-traditional students in nursing: a lot of us are married, have kids in school, own a house, s.o. has a job that he/she can't leave, etc. I chose nursing over medicine because I wanted the flexibility to pick up and go if my husband's job required it (please don't flame me for being a throwback; if I had spent as many years on my education as he did and the tables were turned, I would expect him to do that for me), or to be able to find a job where we already live! But I paid for staying here in the sense that I wasn't hired as quickly as the "kids" that could just move to their new job with no strings.

I think there is also a pervasive attitude that anyone can be a nurse, just like the attitude that anyone can teach. That just isn't true, but it allows a lot of folks to lull themselves into nursing without shadowing first to see if they even like it, let alone won't suck at it. This is only part of the problem, but I'd bet it has something to do with that 2-year exodus from the bedside.

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