"Too smart" to be a nurse

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Everytime I tell people that I am studying to be a nurse, the reply is always the same. "Oh, you are so much smarter than that! You should be a doctor!" :angryfire It infuriates me every time I hear it. Nurses do so much more than they get credit for, and I know nurses who are a lot smarter than some doctors. Just because nurses are not in school as long and don't get paid as much as doctors, DOES NOT mean we are not as smart. I happen to want to be a nurse because I love interacting with patients, who are human beings in need of someone to take care of them. Nurses get waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more interactions with the patients than the doctors do.

Has anyone else been told the same thing?

I have been told this- twice by two different nurses. On was very specific- "don't waste your brain, be an engineer like your dad, don't be a nurse." That was when I was contemplating school and again recently by a family friend who has her master's in nursing and has been a nurse for 30 + years, she said don't do it, don't go into nursing. She said her son just garduated from college and in his first job he makes more moeny than she does after 30 years. She was quite vehment that the nursing profession does not pay for experience and that the responsibilty I will have will not be worth they pay. & That I should do something else.

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Specializes in Recovery Room.

"Just tell them that if they think you are so smart, they should know you are smart enough to know what you want to do with the rest of your life....but you appreciate the compliment!;):twocents: "

Amen to that!:cheers:

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Specializes in Recovery Room.
Just tell them that if they think you are so smart, they should know you are smart enough to know what you want to do with the rest of your life....but you appreciate the compliment!;):twocents:

Amen to that!:cheers:

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I get it from my mother, who used her brain to become a teacher (an admirable field to go into, but sort of on the same professional and pay range as nursing - why didn't she get her doctorate and become a college professor?). I also have gotten that comment right here on all nurses. I posted my background on an unrelated thread, and it happens to include extremely good grades from a fairly prestigious university and a previous bachelor's. Someone posted back something along the lines of "You must be lying, no nurses are that smart. If you had those grades why aren't you in med school?!" Umm...OK...maybe because I didn't know I wanted to go into the medical field when I was 18? Or because I didn't start taking all the premed courses at that age? Or because I'm already married and almost 30 and want to have children soon, so I'd rather not spent the next 6-8 years working 80 hours a week? I occasionally get a little jealous when I meet MDs who are younger than I am, but so far I really enjoy nursing and I'm happy where I am. Plus, I fully plan to continue and become a CRNA, and while the school will be tough, I can put it off for 5 years and it's only 28 months.

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Specializes in New Graduate Nurse.

Gosh, I have started to respond to this thread three times now. Started only to delete because I was going to say some "angry things". So many people ask questions like this...simply because they DON'T GET IT or THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT A NURSE IS or DOES.

Three professors have now asked me that very question. You work so hard and get perfect grades, why are you going into nursing? You should go to med school. I got "the question" twice during prerequisites. Both of those times I was sitting in the "professional" setting of the professor's office. I was actually kind of shaken and almost defensive when faced with having to respond to "the question". I felt like they were accusing me of "sandbagging" or taking an easy way out by going into nursing.

Since then, only one instructor has asked the question. She was my Fundamentals of Nursing instructor. The way she asked the question was sort of like. "Your so smart, why are you going into nursing? You probably could have gotten into med school." After hearing my reasons, she patted me on the shoulder and told me that nursing needs more people like me. It sort of felt like I (a hopeful future nurse) had validation and acceptance from a nurse.

We all have our reasons for being who and what we are. All you have to do is read this thread to see a few of those reason as well as seeing some of the passion behind those reasons.

As I go forward in my nursing education, I am becoming prouder and prouder as to what I will be doing. There are a lot of people that will never understand those reason....and never feel the pride of nursing....simply because they are not nurses.

For me...the reason I am becoming a nurse is to become a millionaire before I am 40. NOT!!:jester:

akspudus

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You should correct them all nurses do is clean up poop. :bugeyes: I just don't understand why people always have the need to put down what other people want to do with their life.

Nurses definatley do a lot more then clean up pee and poop however I am smart butt and would end up going haywire on people who say stuff like that. (which I already have)

I have a barb wire like tongue so I can't get into all of it but I can get brutal on tearing apart what they do or don't do for a living if they want to jump into the verbal boxing ring. My other comment is "careful what comes out of your piehole there, I might be your nurse one day and you may need me for cleaning up your pee, poop, and the other 500 million other things that nurses do."

I also make it a point with my own healthcare to be seen excusively by nurses, so when people say oh what did the doc say? I say the NURSE said ..........or the nurse spent all this time with me and answered all my questions.... how much time did your doc spend with you?

So it balances itself out. :devil:

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I have been told this- twice by two different nurses. On was very specific- "don't waste your brain, be an engineer like your dad, don't be a nurse." That was when I was contemplating school and again recently by a family friend who has her master's in nursing and has been a nurse for 30 + years, she said don't do it, don't go into nursing. She said her son just garduated from college and in his first job he makes more moeny than she does after 30 years. She was quite vehment that the nursing profession does not pay for experience and that the responsibilty I will have will not be worth they pay. & That I should do something else.

A friend of mine's wife became an engineer because that is what everyone told her to do. She lasted 2 months in the field and went back to school for nursing. She is now an RN and has been for 3 years she LOVES it, her husband is so releived she is an RN because she is happy and content, and if she's happy, he gets to be happy. He is a police officer and though they get paid well in our area, not only does she make more then him, she has better bennies and a better schedule then he does and now that they have 2 little kids the hospital has been fantastic about the schedule. No engineering firm would have cared a penny about their kids.

Money is not everything, she made more as an egineer and she was miserable and depressed and made everyone around her equally as sad. She is still brilliant. Your nurse friends sound burnt out maybe it's time they left the field and they don't know it but making more money in some fields isn't worth it, they'll cut your throat in a heartbeat and ospital politics and gossip is child's play compared to what happens in other industries.

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I have come to the realization that it takes more motivation than intelligence to be a doctor, lawyer, OR a nurse. A person w/just average intelligence & some common sense can accomplish a lot if they have MOTIVATION. My point is, although there are many highly intelligent people of ALL occupations, just b/c one is a doctor does not mean they are any smarter than a nurse, engineer, teacher, chemist, or stay-at-home mom. I've heard that comment b/f, and it's very ignorant & narrow-minded, IMO. There are many types of intelligence, and not everyone WANTS to be a doctor, thank goodness!!

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I'm a pretty smart cookie - not that that matters - I got my first undergrad with honors, did very well in nursing school, Sigma Theta Tau, honors grad - all that fluff n'stuff...

But none of that is really relevant - here's why I'm smart enough to go to nursing school - and why ALL of us are smart enough to go to nursing school....

My nine-year-old niece was visiting my mother at the same time I was. I was still in school at the time, and she thought she was very grown up because she was sitting on the bed with me as I did some homework and she finished a book she was supposed to talk about in her class the next day (book reports already!).

She looked over at me - very serious - and said, "Auntie, why do you want to be a nurse NOW?" (Remember, 34 is ancient to this kid...)

I looked at her, and I said, "Do you really want to know why? It might make you sad." She assured me she really wanted to know, so I told her. "Do you remember when Grandpa (my father) was in the hospital?" She nodded. "Well, I was with him when he passed away, and I had seen how good the nurses took care of him and how they cared about him. When he passed away, his nurse was crying because she was so sad that we had lost him, and she knew what a good person he was in the short time she knew him. And I thought, yeah, I can do that - I can take care of people the way those nurses took care of my daddy."

She looked at me for a minute - I wish I'd had a camera - she was so serious, holding her pencil up to her chin and thinking. She looked at me and said - I swear I'm telling the truth; I'll never forget her words - "You know, that's really good, because other people would want someone to take care of families like it was their own family."

THAT'S why I'm too smart to go to medical school.

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Specializes in 5th Semester - Graduation Dec '09!.

I get the same thing and it is so irritating! My family says "you should be a doctor"-- well, I don't want to be a doctor! It really passive aggressive and rude. I don't appreciate when people undermine my profession!

Nursing and Medicine are 2 completely different disciplines. If someone is a respiratory therapist, I don't say "you have so much potential-- you should be a dietician!"

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I feel the opposite way. When I tell people that I am going to be a nurse,

they responded "You must be smart". They said that because they understand

all how challenging it is to remember the signs and symptoms of all those

diseases. They also know that nurses are the backbone for the doctors.

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I've heard similar things from my family. They equate years of education with intelligence. Any doc must have a minimum of 8 yrs of school. You can become a nurse in 1 yr (as did my husband).

Also, my family considers a doc to be a nurse's boss because the nurse can't give a med/treatment/special diet that a doc hasn't prescribed. To them, the nurse does what the doc tells them to do, so the doc must be the smarter of the two.

Their opinions really don't bother me that much, because I understand that, to non-medical people, all the subtle variations aren't usually noticed.

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