Should I Become a Nurse?

MsLoriRN, BSN, RN · Mar 26, 2009

Hi, Ryan...

GREAT questions you're asking! :up: You are wise to consider all these things before you commit the time, effort, and $$$$$ to nursing school.

As for things like catheterizing patients, it goes right along with sticking needles into people, starting IV's, and the like. You will be terrified the first time you do it, but each time after that gets a little easier, and soon enough, you're not phased by it at all.

Then, there will be weird things that will "get to you." Every nurse has his/her own particular "goo-phobia," as I call it. I can take a lot of gunk, but sweaty patients make my skin crawl. (weird, I know!) I've talked to lots of future nurses about the "blood and guts" factor in nursing, and how you handle it.

As for getting a job in ICU right out of school, it's not likely. I worked most of my career in all areas of critical care, and I wouldn't have wanted that job right out of school. You would not be "safe," nor prepared for the amount of clinical judgement calls the ICU nurse needs to make. So it will take you some time to get where you believe, at this point, you want to end up.

For CRNA school, you may want to visit this page: http://www.allnursingschools.com/faqs/crna.php

Generally, you need one year of acute care experience, a BSN, and your RN license, but these may vary by school.

My advice to you is to consider the profession carefully, from many angles (as you seem to be starting already), and, should you decide to become a nurse, to take your time getting ready to get the CRNA. Anesthesia is one of those areas where you are at a high risk of being sued...it's just the nature of the profession, I'm afraid, in our litigacious society. Don't be afraid of going into it, it's a great opportunity for a nurse...just make sure you're ready, you know what you're doing (that's where getting the needed experience comes in), and you really love it! Then you'll do great! :wink2:

Good luck to you!

Lori

ryan012 · Mar 27, 2009

Thanks Lori for your advice and insight into the profession. If you wouldn't mind, could you elaborate on the necessary experience you feel is required to be a successful critical care nurse? I know you mentioned it wouldn't be a great idea to assume such a position immediately upon graduation.

MsLoriRN, BSN, RN · Mar 28, 2009

Hi again,

Sure, I'd be happy to respond :) (Gives me another chance to play with these smilies...)

It helps to have a little background in the history of ICU nursing, and why it was "created." Actually, it started with CCU's (coronary care units). I'll keep this VERY brief, you can search around and read more if you like; in a small nutshell, what was happening was cardiac patients were not surviving their heart attacks because doctors simply couldn't be with them 24 hours a day. So they got the idea to provide specialized and advanced training to select RN's, and teach them to basically be the doctors' "eyes, ears, and sixth sense" on a 24 hour a day basis. These nurses learned to read EKG's, auscultate (listen to) heart tones and distinguish the sounds they were hearing and what was normal, what was abnormal, and what it meant when related to the EKG and other clinical presentations, and so on. They trained the nurses how to respond to certain emergency situations and gave them "permission" (via standing orders from the physicians) to implement emergency treatments based on the clinical judgements that they made at the bedside. When they did all of this, heart attack victims began to survive the event, and CCU's were "born."

Here's the KEY THING you should take away from this in response to your question about the new grad in the ICU environment: Much of what the ICU nurse does is based on judgement calls. It takes t-i-m-e and experience... and plenty of it...to develop that kind of judgement.

I worked with a number of nursing students in the ICU. Most were in their final year of nursing school, and were selected to rotate in the ICU because they had demonstrated particular skill in their other clinical rotations. And even so, most of them were overwhelmed to terrified! These patients are very, very sick. The technology takes time to master, interpreting the data you get from the technology takes even longer to master, and you have to know what you are doing so you don't kill someone! I firmly believe that if a hospital hires a nurse fresh out of nursing school into their ICU, they are in a severe staffing crisis, and they are setting themselves and probably the new nurse up for a potential lawsuit, and will likely see that new nurse burned out, and possibly even leaving the profession before he or she ever should have.

All that said, I love critical care nursing, and I recommend it highly to anyone who feels drawn to it! But not until you've had at least a year of med-surg experience. Even with that, you'll still be overwhelmed when you start! But that's what preceptors are for! :wink2:

Finally, remember that there are a number of critical care "specialties" that you can go into. The critical care units at smaller hospitals will often have everyone in one or two units, but larger hospitals will have them divided up into neurological, surgical, surgical heart, medical, coronary, pediatric, and neonatal ICU's. Also, within the critical care specialties you have things like the ER, PAR (post-anesthesia recovery...you might be interested in that!), cardiac catheterization lab, and even more, depending on the facility and what they offer. So you see, there is a kind of "stair step" that you take into the specialties, AFTER you've gained experience and have refined your clinical judgement skills.

As a new grad, you won't be anywhere close. (jmho...)

Hope this has helped, and good luck to you!