faith010

You can't force your body to do things. I myself am able to sleep at night on my nights off, however whenever I go back to work the next night I wind up staying awake for close to 24 hours straight.

I became a nurse because I wanted to help others and was very interested in all things medical. However, as a nurse I am over worked, working night shift all week, feeling miserable. My boss was nasty to me because I took two weeks vacation of my earned vacation time out of 52 weeks working every night. I don't know what to do at this point. I feel like life is to short for me to be unhappy like this, but I have not found a new job. I don't want to completely abandon nursing but I feel like I am not myself anymore working nights and in my current situation/job. Can anyone offer some words of encouragement?

for the record I did an accelerated program. it was very intense and it took me a a little over a year to complete. so this is my experience. for people saying they had time for a lot of other things, i doubt they went through such a rigorous and short of a program as i did.

In order to do well in nursing school, I had to sacrifice so much of my personal life. I had to study every single weekend and do a million assignments. All I ever did was study when I was in nursing school. This is from my own experience. Oh and even after nursing school, I still had to study all the time for the NCLEX.

I feel like I would have so much more potential as a nurse if I could just stop my hands from being shaky which is anxiety related. I am so jealous of people with steady hands who are able to just insert needles without a second thought. I just cannot for the life of me keep my hands steady. I have tried everything from cutting caffeine, combat breathing, deep breathing, drinking calming tea. I do not want to have to take Propranolol or any other type of med. Any advice?

I remember being in my first semester of nursing school in a class and thinking in the back of my mind how this is not right for me. However, I stuck with it, I said to myself "don't be a quitter." What I failed to do was think of my future self, so I stuck with nursing and now I am more miserable than ever as a nurse. You should truly be honest with yourself, ask yourself if you can see yourself doing this type of job for a living, doing it day in and day out. I only wish I was honest with myself and put my energy into something I would actually enjoy. I would definitely look into other majors if I was you.

It is so difficult for me to accept that I have worked so hard all these years in college only to feel so utterly disappointed by my career and feel like I am not good enough to work during the day time, to feel like I have been banished to the night shift and must work every weekend and every holiday and never get the chance to even sleep at night. Sleeping at night has become a privilege to me. It's not even night shift, it's nursing in general that has made me feel so disappointed. It's not what I thought it would be. I don't know where to go from here. I feel so trapped at this point. Anyone else feel this way, disappointed by their career?

I have pretty bad anxiety. I do not take any medications. From my own personal experience, nursing has intensified my anxiety to new heights to the point where I get physical symptoms such as chest tightness, chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, choking feeling, shaky, sweating, flushing. I had to change shifts to avoid these horrible feelings. Like the person above me said, at least there are different options in nursing. I definitely do not want to discourage you.