Please help important decision

What is it that you decided made you not want to be a nurse? You might encounter similar things as an ultrasound tech/ xray tech. There's tons you could do:

Social Work

Health Care Administration

CNA

Phlebotomy

Physical Therapist

Medical Assistant

Registered Dietician

Dental Hygenist

Pharmacist

Pharmacy Technician

Physician's Assistant

Surgical Tech

Dental Assistant

Respiratory Therapist

Just to name a few... I'm sure there are more.

I would go the paramedic or RT ( respiratory therapist). You are still at the bedside, and you utilize all the same assessment and skills, and you will learn some cool new ones like intubation (para and RT) :) or arterial blood gases ( RT).

These routes are more skill orientated and they are both 2 year diplomas so it is relatively quick. Actually you would finish in the same amount of time b/c your are in year 2 of 4 in nursing?? Not to mention the pay is the same too.

if you want more patient interaction over skills I'd say social work.

Hope it helps,

Derek

Surgical Tech is a great one.

You might like surg tech, but there is not likely to be a lot of overlap with the coursework that you've already done and it doesn't pay as well as nursing. My first thought was respiratory therapist. You'd make the same money as a nurse with much of the patient-care rewards, but a lot less of the daily grind stress. No changing diapers! And you can get really good at the thing that you do. There is always an RT as part of the code team, so when you are assigned to the code team for your shift, you would be a part of any codes that get called, which I personally think would be really cool.