I am a second career student starting a Associates Degree RN program next month and all of a sudden, I am petrified. I only have 5 semesters of 2-day-a-week clinicals to get through, but I'm so nervous. I'm quitting my teaching job so that I am not so overwhelmed, and I'm panicking that maybe I'm not making the right career move. Nurses in our area make more per hour than teachers, but I'm also burnt out on teaching, so it's a combination of reasons for the change.
My father is a retired family doctor, still made house calls till he retired. But I never ever considered medicine until recently, probably to take a different path. But I've always loved medical stuff, love hospitals, don't mind blood.
I've been working on pre-requisites for about 5 years now and finally have everything done. I was sooo excited until 3 am last night when everything hit at once...
But what if I'm not good at drawing blood?
Do I REALLY want to work on holidays, every other weekend, and evenings -- something my teaching career didn't require?
What if I make a mistake and someone gets hurt?
What if I catch some awful disease and hubby (who is lukewarm on the whole thing anyway) freaks out?
What if I try to help someone out of bed and hurt my back really bad?
Am I really going to be comfortable helping someone go to the bathroom?
It's funny --- as a teacher, I can say with 100% certainty that if I knew I'd be only working with kids during nursing school, I'd be fine. But there's something about knowing that I'll be working with ADULTS that is very intimidating.
I know, some of these thoughts are stupid and rambling, but I figured if anyone could share something that would either make me feel better or cause me to rethink my decision, it'd be the awesome people on this board!
Thanks!!