CareerORKids

I would still love to become a PA-C but I don't have the medical experience (except for candy striping as a high school student) and I really don't want to become a Phlebotomist or a CNA. Any other ideas how I could get the 1 year or 2000+ hours of patient experience required for the only PA-C schools in my area?

If it's the right time for you and your husband, maybe it wouldn't hurt to start trying! Would you continue to work on the Cardiac floor part time or full time? Hopefully you have lots of options. Good luck!

Thank you all for replying to my post! You've given me good information to consider. I had done a bit of job shadowing but you've helped me realize that I really need to shadow more RNs this summer. This will really help me decide if I truly want to pursue nursing at the expense of starting a family for a few years. I really believe I would be a great nurse, largely because I am detail-oriented, efficient, empathetic, and love learning--it but since teaching turned out to be such a bad match for me, I've lost some confidence in my ability to choose a career that I'll enjoy. This past year, as I was taking the prereqs, I began listening to Dr. Laura on the radio and as a result I decided that I definitely want to be home with my children until they are school age. I understand that many moms need to work but my situation is blessedly different. My parents have no problem paying for my nursing school tuition and what's even more unbelievable is that they recently paid off my husband's and my mortgage! So the financial questions aren't plaguing me, to say the least. Mostly I want to have a full-time career available for when my kids are in school and nursing seems to be the best fit. Another option, though, is for me to take three more classes to become endorsed as a library media specialist. I could easily take these classes this fall while trying to conceive now, and I could keep up the certification until my kids were in school. I think I would like this job too, perhaps not as much as I would enjoy nursing, but it would be a compromise so I could have a job that's a better fit than teaching while not having to put off pregnancy. Any more advice on when to start a family is welcome! It's truly hard to fight off the maternity urge once it sets in.

I wanted to be a Physician Assistant for years, but I went into teaching instead. I have a Master's in Teaching and five years of teaching experience but I'm too much of a perfectionist to keep at it--it burned me out! Now I believe I will enjoy being an RN (and will maybe become an NP later). I finished all prereqs but won't be able to start nursing school for another 6 months. It will take me until I am 31 to finish (that's five semesters). That's longer than I planned because I didn't make it in to an accelerated program. I'm having a hard time not giving up these nursing school plans because I would prefer to start a family now. I really doubt I'd ever go back to nursing school once my husband and I start a family, and we would be fine on my husband's income alone. In a nutshell: I think I'd love to have a career once our (theoretical) kids would be in school, but I'm not sure it's worth it to put in the three years now when we don't need my income. Is it really worth waiting three more years for a child?