Should I change degree to nursing?

[Shaye7]

Hi there fellow Nurses! I warn this is a long post from a confused individual!

I am in a dilemma at the moment. I am currently studying the beginning of my second year in a bachelors of Psychology degree. However, I went into the course not knowing what i really wanted to do with it and have discovered that it may not be for me. I have discovered that the job out look with only a bachelors in psychology is not that great and I am not interested in taking the gruelling path to become a clinical psychologist.

I have a friend who has just completed her first semester of nursing and what she has been learning during her degree has gotten me really interested in transferring. The nursing course seems to follow a system of two theory subjects and two practical subjects as well as placements during a full-time semester and takes 3 years to complete.

I find the full-time 12 hour shifts with the 3 days on and 4 days off in nursing attractive.

I am young and likely to be childless for quite a few years for now. I see on this page how hard these kind of hours can be for people with a family.

Do childless people in nursing generally find the shift work less challenging to work around?

On the 4 days off do nurses feel up for maybe taking short camping trips or are they so exhausted that most of them are spent recuperating?

I have been looking through other posts on this page and many nurses seem to display a lot of distaste for their jobs and are very stressed out.

Is the average work day always full of stress and un-enjoyable?

Is it the work you do that makes the job un-enjoyable or other employees?

Do you usually get along with other nurses or are most places very cliquey?

Is this job as horrible as many people online make it out to be?

I have never had a calling or passion for nursing. This is something that worries me. While I do like working around people I am so terrified about taking up this degree and regretting it. What has me thinking of nursing is the hopeful job stability with reasonable pay, the days off when working a full-time schedule, being on my feet and active while at work and feeling like you are helping your patients.

If I enter this field I intend on treating it with the mindset that it is just a job and not expect heaps of gratification from patients and other workers. With this mindset is it easier to find job satisfaction in this field?

I find I learn to enjoy all sorts of work if I can get good at it. Can you ever become good or a whizz at nursing? I know its a career where things are always changing and your always learning new things.

I will stop here. To anyone who has taken the time to read or answer some of these questions thank you heaps as I'm sure this is a jumbled mess...

[applewhitern, BSN, RN]

You are right about psychology, there isn't much you can do with a bachelor's. If you decide to pursue nursing, you should look into psych nursing, since that is an interest you have. One does not specialize in any particular area during nursing school, but once you get licensed, you can get a job on a psych unit and become certified in that area. Then if you find you don't like it, you can switch to something else, since you will have a nursing license anyway, you can work in many different areas. Good luck.

[Miss Infermiera2b, BSN, RN]

I would recommend seeing if you can shadow a nurse at a local hospital. I think psychology is lots of fun but there is so much more to nursing than psych. If you get a look first hand, you might get an even better idea of what would be expected of you as a nurse.

[loriangel14, RN]

Be aware that not all nursing positions are 12 hour shifts with 4 days off every week. Plus in some areas the job outlook is not good. You may end up working straight nights and you may end up working in an area of nursing that you weren't planning on being in just to get a job. Nursing is a great career but it can be very stressful.

[NurseGirl525, ASN, RN]

Why did you go into Psychology to begin with? What were you interested in doing with it? Is it the work schedule of a nurse that interests you? As a previous poster mentioned, not all places are like that. Some hospitals do 5/8 hour work weeks. I'm not sure where you live, but some areas of the country, finding a job is extremely difficult.

I'm on the side of the fence that does not believe you have to have this "calling" in nursing, but you do need to have an interest in helping take care of sick people. I have seen people who seem to have this mindset recently that you don't even have to have an interest in caring about people period because basically a monkey could do the job of a nurse. That's not true either. But in the end you do have to treat as a job. People are negative everywhere, in every profession. You will deal with negative people, cliquey people, all of it. I have yet to work at a single company where every person was super happy to be there and felt the company treated them awesome. It comes down to what type of personality you are.

None of us can answer if nursing is the right career choice for you. I don't think because you like the material covered in a friend's class and you like the work schedule of a nurse that you can decide from that. See if you can shadow one and see what their job entails. If you think you might be interested after that, go sign up for prereqs.