Career changers - is it worth the change?

Ruby Vee, BSN · Dec 31, 2016

To all career changers,
Some of you are just starting (taking pre-reqs), some of you are already in the nursing programs, and others are already working as RNs. As a career changer myself, and at the beginning stages of this journey, I would like to know if the changing of the careers was worth it.
The reason I am asking is no matter where I turn all I hear is how nursing is awful. I have been teaching for years and I cannot do it anymore (another story for another thread), so I decided to do nursing. I feel like once I get myself deep into it I would hate to regret the decision.
In any event, those of you that are at the beginning stages and some already working, was it worth the career change? I would very much appreciate if anyone shared their experiences.
Thank you!

Nursing is far from awful. You need to remember that satisfied, happy people aren't hunched over their laptops in the middle of the night typing away about how satisfied and happy they are. (OK, you got me there. Here I am, after years of night shift, typing away in the middle of the night and I'm happy!) The majority of posts on any forum are going to be negative. People who are angry are going to do a lot of ranting; and even if they change their minds tomorrow and realize that things weren't really so awful after all, they're unlikely to come back to the thread they've started and say "Hey, I just gave it some thought and I was wrong." No, they're going to come back and comment when they've thought of MORE ammunition for their rant.

So lets look at some of the complaints, and see how you, personally feel about these potential negatives:

Nurses are mean bullies who have no compassion for students; they're burned out old dogs who can't learn new tricks and ought to just retire and get out of my way. They're mean old biter nurses, and they're nothing but crusty old bats.

We hear that a lot on this forum. The truth of the matter is that there are a few bullies out there -- I've seen two in forty years. But mostly what these posters are calling bullying is nothing of the sort. "My preceptor talks about her family with all of her friends, but she won't share with me." (She just met you last week; these people have been her friends for years.) "She wouldn't say hello to me in the lobby this morning." (Did you say hello to her? No? Well, she drives to work in her glasses, leaves them in her car and then stumbles up to the unit to put her contacts in before work. I'd lay odds she didn't even SEE you."

Nurses should take me under their wing and teach me. It's your orientation; you are an adult. Figure out with your preceptor what you need to learn and discuss with your preceptor how you can get the learning experiences you need. Take ownership of your orientation. Preceptors aren't magical beings who can take care of a full assignment while spoon feeding you just the tidbits you need. And besides; it's not all about you. If the patient starts to go south while I'm patiently trying to explain to you how to do a 12 lead ECG, I may just take over from you and do the damned thing already so we can give it to the doc, make some decisions and get some orders.

My preceptor wouldn't let me help when the patient was coding. How am I supposed to lear if she just takes over? It's about the patient, not your learning needs. If caring for the patient pre-empts your education, then your preceptor got her priorities right. Some preceptors can educate a new grad WHILE saving their patient, but those paragons are few and far between. Live with the preceptor you get.

My preceptor made me feel stupid, and he shouldn't do that. He should be kind to me and make me feel welcome on the unit. Your preceptor just caught your third insulin error. When he called the first error to your attention, you giggled and said you didn't mean to do that. The second time, you got defensive and the third time he had an idea that you didn't take it seriously enough. today. An insulin error, especially by adding a couple of zeroes to the dose, could KILL a patient. Hopefully you get that now.

Nursing is an interesting, challenging career with myriad opportunities and flexible scheduling with good pay and benefits. It is also a career that demands much of you: You will miss Christmas, possibly every other year. (That's OK -- Santa comes when YOU say he comes, and your kids might get two Christmases.) You will miss the 4th of July neighborhood block party and possibly your best friends gender reveal party. (How did THAT get to be a thing anyway?) You'll work nights, weekend, holidays and you'll have to drive to work in rain, in snow, in hurricane and volcanic eruptions. Many people come through nursing school and start their new jobs with NO idea that could really happen. Think about how you'd feel about missing all those family celebrations (or having them rescheduled when you can attend). If you need an excuse to miss Thanksgiving at Uncle Edgar and Aunt Ellie's house every year because Ellie always get drunk and maudlin while Edgar gets drunk and belligerent, work is a good excuse and no one can hold it against you. (Personally, I'd arrive just in time for turkey dinner, wearing scrubs, and disappear when the eating was done and before the fighting started. But your milage may vary.) You can, however, take your birthday off every year, your wedding anniversary and the day your dog needs to be put to sleep. The year Dad was dying, I found someone to switch with me so I could buy a frozen turkey and haul it and all the Thanksgiving fixings 900 miles in a cooler to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my father. (Mom had Alzheimers; she couldn't remember how to cook or how to eat.) Your office friends won't do that for you, and they probably wouldn't even see the need. But I got to spend a wonderful weekend with my dad, talking about all of the things we needed to talk about, and when he wound up in the ER having achieved a simultaneous MI and CVA, I was able to say goodbye knowing he was ready. Nursing is a wonderful career where you can touch lives, save lives, change lives. If you love it, it will love you back. But you sort of have to be strong enough to let the bovine feces roll of your back, deal straightforwardly with folks who cannot be straightforward with you, and learn to see the advantages in the hours, something to enjoy in the work and something to like in each coworker. If you can do that, it will be well worth the change. If not, perhaps you can find something to love in your present career.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Dec 31, 2016

Nursing is far from awful. You need to remember that satisfied, happy people aren't hunched over their laptops in the middle of the night typing away about how satisfied and happy they are. (OK, you got me there. Here I am, after years of night shift, typing away in the middle of the night and I'm happy!) The majority of posts on any forum are going to be negative. People who are angry are going to do a lot of ranting; and even if they change their minds tomorrow and realize that things weren't really so awful after all, they're unlikely to come back to the thread they've started and say "Hey, I just gave it some thought and I was wrong." No, they're going to come back and comment when they've thought of MORE ammunition for their rant.
So lets look at some of the complaints, and see how you, personally feel about these potential negatives:
Nurses are mean bullies who have no compassion for students; they're burned out old dogs who can't learn new tricks and ought to just retire and get out of my way. They're mean old biter nurses, and they're nothing but crusty old bats.
We hear that a lot on this forum. The truth of the matter is that there are a few bullies out there -- I've seen two in forty years. But mostly what these posters are calling bullying is nothing of the sort. "My preceptor talks about her family with all of her friends, but she won't share with me." (She just met you last week; these people have been her friends for years.) "She wouldn't say hello to me in the lobby this morning." (Did you say hello to her? No? Well, she drives to work in her glasses, leaves them in her car and then stumbles up to the unit to put her contacts in before work. I'd lay odds she didn't even SEE you."
Nurses should take me under their wing and teach me. It's your orientation; you are an adult. Figure out with your preceptor what you need to learn and discuss with your preceptor how you can get the learning experiences you need. Take ownership of your orientation. Preceptors aren't magical beings who can take care of a full assignment while spoon feeding you just the tidbits you need. And besides; it's not all about you. If the patient starts to go south while I'm patiently trying to explain to you how to do a 12 lead ECG, I may just take over from you and do the damned thing already so we can give it to the doc, make some decisions and get some orders.
My preceptor wouldn't let me help when the patient was coding. How am I supposed to learn if she just takes over? It's about the patient, not your learning needs. If caring for the patient pre-empts your education, then your preceptor got her priorities right. Some preceptors can educate a new grad WHILE saving their patient, but those paragons are few and far between. Live with the preceptor you get.
My preceptor made me feel stupid, and he shouldn't do that. He should be kind to me and make me feel welcome on the unit. Your preceptor just caught your third insulin error. When he called the first error to your attention, you giggled and said you didn't mean to do that. The second time, you got defensive and the third time he had an idea that you didn't take it seriously enough. today. An insulin error, especially by adding a couple of zeroes to the dose, could KILL a patient. Hopefully you get that now.
Nursing is an interesting, challenging career with myriad opportunities and flexible scheduling with good pay and benefits. It is also a career that demands much of you: You will miss Christmas, possibly every other year. (That's OK -- Santa comes when YOU say he comes, and your kids might get two Christmases.) You will miss the 4th of July neighborhood block party and possibly your best friends gender reveal party. (How did THAT get to be a thing anyway?) You'll work nights, weekend, holidays and you'll have to drive to work in rain, in snow, in hurricane and volcanic eruptions. Many people come through nursing school and start their new jobs with NO idea that could really happen.
Think about how you'd feel about missing all those family celebrations (or having them rescheduled when you can attend). If you need an excuse to miss Thanksgiving at Uncle Edgar and Aunt Ellie's house every year because Ellie always get drunk and maudlin while Edgar gets drunk and belligerent, work is a good excuse and no one can hold it against you. (Personally, I'd arrive just in time for turkey dinner, wearing scrubs, and disappear when the eating was done and before the fighting started. But your mileage may vary.) You can, however, take your birthday off every year, your wedding anniversary and the day your dog needs to be put to sleep.
The year Dad was dying, I found someone to switch with me so I could buy a frozen turkey and haul it and all the Thanksgiving fixings 900 miles in a cooler to cook Thanksgiving dinner for my father. (Mom had Alzheimers; she couldn't remember how to cook or how to eat.) Your office friends won't do that for you, and they probably wouldn't even see the need. But I got to spend a wonderful weekend with my dad, talking about all of the things we needed to talk about, and when he wound up in the ER having achieved a simultaneous MI and CVA, I was able to say goodbye knowing he was ready.
Nursing is a wonderful career where you can touch lives, save lives, change lives. If you love it, it will love you back. But you sort of have to be strong enough to let the bovine feces roll of your back, deal straightforwardly with folks who cannot be straightforward with you, and learn to see the advantages in the hours, something to enjoy in the work and something to like in each coworker. If you can do that, it will be well worth the change. If not, perhaps you can find something to love in your present career.

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

jaycam, RN · Jan 4, 2017

I finished nursing school about a month ago.

I went back to school at 31 after a mixed bag of working as a nursing assistant and working in tech support/tech writing. While I liked doing help desk/IT/tech work, it wasn't near as engaging for me, so when I was given the chance to go back for retraining, I pulled the nursing assistant work out and went that direction.

I'm well aware that I'm still in the happy shiny phase, waiting for the shoe to drop. I keep waiting. I've had some disappointments, but they haven't been heartbreaking. I spent the last three years working as a nursing assistant again, plus my clinicals, plus everyone around me, from friends who are nurses to professors, carefully managing my expectations.

A lot of it is perspective. No, that nurse isn't trying to eat their young the majority of the time. If a nurse is being critical, it's not the time to get defensive. They are talking to you because they want you to fix it. You have the potential to do it right, if you didn't, you would not be there. LISTEN. I had some pretty hard nose clinical instructors who were fairly intimidating at the time. They became some of the people I respected the most as I continued to prove to them I was listening to what they said and improving. They aren't near as hard on you as a scared patient or their family.

In reality, much like everything in life, you get what you put in. If you want a good experience, you have to put in the effort.

Semper_Gumby · Jan 6, 2017

I briefly considered a career in education but quickly realized I didn't have the patience to put up with the downsides of the profession (potentially spoiled, entitled kids with equally spoiled, entitled parents; constantly working to formulate lesson plans, etc.; dealing with ridiculous demands from administration and legislature, etc.). Nursing has its own set of politicking and problems, but I like that I can generally leave work at work and get my days off to myself. I think it's just a matter of what kind of baloney are you willing to put up with?

I worked with a nurse who used to be a teacher. She eventually left our unit to be a nurse educator. :)

LessValuableNinja · Jan 9, 2017

4th career. Worth it. No regrets, even with the pay cut.