Reality

grinnurse, RN · May 28, 2006

I have been out of school for a little over a year, and I am already on my second job. First one was on a telemetry floor where I had anywhere from 8-9 patients, of which at least 3-4 where totals, we only had two CNAs for a 33 floor unit. Needless to say I absolutley hated this job. I now work PCU at a smaller hospital, where I have 4 patients, and yes even sometimes that can be overwhelming. Although I am much happier at this job, I still can't envision myself doing this for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think my choice to become a nurse was not the best decision I ever made. I just wanted to know does anyone else feel like they made a wrong choice? Somehow nursing is just not what I though it would be.

Hello-I think your title spoke volumes. I am also about to begin my second job as nurse who has nearly completed her first year as well. You describe what seems like the hospital that I left except you had an aid. And yes I have questioned the decision that I made to become a nurse several times during this past year but I rest assured that this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I will agree with you that nursing is not what I thought it would be b/c I think that we are set up in NS with the "idea" of how nursing should be, you have the perfect hosp., adequate staffing and resources, and all the time in the world to imitate Florence Nightingale and then there's the reality of nursing as we know it today.

I just keep thinking back through this past year of all the people that I have helped, all the wonderful nurses at the facility that I just left who truly helped me through what could have been a really bad transition, and how much personal growth I have seen and am thankful to be as healthy as I am and that my family, especially my husband and mother, who have worked around my crazy schedule. Good luck and maybe you just haven't found your niche in nursing yet. Don't give up b/c you have come way to far for that!!

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 4, 2006

i had two bad jobs in my first year out of nursing school and that was 30 years ago. it took me about 3 years before i started feeling like i had any confidence in what i was doing. over the next few years i developed some real bad attitude that i attributed to burn out. i never felt that i made a wrong choice in going into nursing, however. always at the heart of this work i knew that i was ultimately helping people. that was most important to me. honestly, i didn't start to feel real confident until i was in my 9th or 10th year and it was the money that was holding me in the profession. guess i'm just a slow learner, but i'm definitely not a quitter. by then, i had held 8 different nursing jobs--no kidding. i stayed at job #9 for nearly 8 years, however. the only reason i left was because i had to move. and, even that job had its not-so-good moments. if i had to tell you why i stayed there so long i would have to say it was because of the people i worked with on a day-to-day basis. i really believe that a good deal of a person's job satisfaction comes from their relationships with the other workers. co-workers can make or break a job, no matter how rotten the patients or the company administrators are. patients come and go; co-workers are by your side day after day. so, think about this. . .is it really the nursing, or is it the people you are working with? are they as supportive as they could be? looking back, i can tell you that i had little to no support from co-workers in job #2. it was miserable and i often wondered if i had made a wrong choice in going into nursing as well. they were unfair in the way they treated me as i struggled to acclimate to my rn role. i didn't make a wrong choice by going into nursing. i'll bet you didn't either or you would have quit nursing school long ago.