Thought I would like nursing...now I don't know

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Hi everyone! I am an ADN student 6 weeks short of finishing my second semester and I am very confused about what to do. I decided to go to school for nursing because I like helping people and definately hate an office job (had one for several years). Here's my problem....I don't know if this is what I want now that I am doing it. I hate clinicals (so far we have only done med-surg, ER, IMC) and dread going to them everyday. I am one of the few students in my group who actually tries to implement a plan of care and I find that so many patients are not willing to help themselves!! I am trying to help these people and they get mad at me, or won't do what they need to, their families are so demanding & some of them are just down right mean! And alot of the nurses where we are doing clinicals are mean and very discouraging....a few of them actually put their hand up in your face if you try to ask them something and they are busy. I wonder if I might like a specialized area, but I won't get to start that until next semester. I am just afraid that I will stick with it and be miserable, then I won't feel like I am doing anything good for my patients or for myself. The few students in my class I have discussed this with are all telling me not to quit, that I am a straight A student and only have a year left...but just because you can do well at something doesn't mean it's what you are meant to do. I don't know...maybe it is just school burnout...I feel like I have lost all my motivation. Any advice would be appreciated...thanks for reading my long post!

Specializes in tele, stepdown/PCU, med/surg.

Lilbiskit,

You are not alone in your feelings. When I was in nursing school, I hated med/surg clinicals!! I mean just the thought of arriving to the floor made me nauseous. While some of the nurses were nice, others didn't really like students and made us feel unwelcome.

A few clinicals I did enjoy like management, OB, and community health. I vowed after graduation, I would never do med/surg. What's the first job I take? Med/surg position in a large teaching hospital in Seattle! I've been there seven months!

While only you can determine if you can stay in this profession, please know that it will get better either in school or out in the real world. I think you might need to learn to not be so hard on yourself. Maybe find an instructor who you connect with and talk to them about your concerns.

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Specializes in Gerontological Nursing, Acute Rehab.

Everyone here has given some very good advice. Nursing school...I sometimes shudder when I think of those days! Relentless studying, instructors riding your back every single day, clinicals that were a trial by fire with nurses that were downright rude.....I remember my very first clinical. I was helping this little old lady to the toilet, and she didn't make it! A big pile of mucousy poop landed right on my new, shiny white sensible nursing shoes (I went to a private college, so we had to wear nursing dresses with stockings and shoes......I guess they didn't expect us to do much work!) I don't know to this day how I didn't run away screaming! (Did I mention that I was about 2 months pregnant at the time and had HORRIBLE morning sickness?) Clinicals can just plain suck, unless you're in a large teaching hospital that is used to accomadating students. Clinicals are not "real" nursing, so don't judge your feelings based on them.

Finish school......real nursing isn't anything at all like clinicals. I have to say that I hated the majority of my clinical rotations, because we never really got to do anything. Most times I was bored! Hang in there! You can do it!

Jennifer :)

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Specializes in Acute Rehab, Short stay obs, ICU, Home H.

Nursing can be a great career. There are so many options out there. If you dont like the hospital, you can always do home health work in an MD's office, be a legal nurse consultant, medical esthetitian. There are so many options.

I know, I am also at that cross road. I have been a nurse for nearly two years and I am currently working in a busy ICU with alot of backstabbing nurses, especially my charge nurse that I should be able to rely on for support. I have recently chosen to leave the ICU and enter home health and if I dont like that, I know I still have many more options.

Just remember that nursing school is NOTHING like the real world of nursing. First of all, you wont have to right those stupid care plans, no instructors on your back, and your patients will appreciate you more because they will see you as a "real nurse."

Dont give up, I know I wont. Just learn from your experience.

Diana

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Specializes in Registered Nurse.
Everyone here has given some very good advice. Nursing school...I sometimes shudder when I think of those days! Relentless studying, instructors riding your back every single day, clinicals that were a trial by fire with nurses that were downright rude.....I remember my very first clinical. I was helping this little old lady to the toilet, and she didn't make it! A big pile of mucousy poop landed right on my new, shiny white sensible nursing shoes (I went to a private college, so we had to wear nursing dresses with stockings and shoes......I guess they didn't expect us to do much work!) I don't know to this day how I didn't run away screaming! (Did I mention that I was about 2 months pregnant at the time and had HORRIBLE morning sickness?) Clinicals can just plain suck, unless you're in a large teaching hospital that is used to accomadating students. Clinicals are not "real" nursing, so don't judge your feelings based on them.

Finish school......real nursing isn't anything at all like clinicals. I have to say that I hated the majority of my clinical rotations, because we never really got to do anything. Most times I was bored! Hang in there! You can do it!

Jennifer :)

Remember those early days!? A lot of things made a nursing student want to toss the cookies back then! You poor thing, Jennifer! You deserve a badge of honor! :chuckle

True, the OP should not give up! There is some area of nursing she may like and she may just need more confidence!

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Specializes in Endocrinology.

I loved reading all the replies since i'm an LPN student with 5 weeks left. Clinicals is burning me out. I keep thinking that working can't be as hard or as boring or as unproductive as nursing school. I'm almost done and I feel like I know nothing. I started 2 IVs for the first time last week and my confidence soared, but i've never inserted a Foley, NG tube, or spoke to a Dr. Those things make me nervous to work in a hospital, but as most LPNs know, that's where most of the money is. Aside from the money, I love direct patient care. So working in a clinic sounds boring to me, but working in a hospital sounds overwhelming.

Although I feel "stupid" at times when it comes to procedures, I'm sticking with it. There were times when I left clinicals feeling really good about myself simply because I comforted a pt that was having an anxiety attack and the nurses were too busy to stay with her. Or I stayed later (along with 3 other students) to clean up a paralyed man because there were no CNAs on the floor and the nurse had other patients to care for. Those kind of things stay with me. It's the bad days that I have to let roll off my back.

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I am a nursing student graduating in May from a BSN program. I felt much the same way that you feel when I was in my first year. I hated clinicals, dreaded everyday of it! I would hide from the instructors because I was terrified to perform skills. It was really ridiculous. It wasn't until I did my Maternal/Newborn rotation in L&D that I found my niche. My advice to you is ... stay with it, you may just find what you are looking for. There are so many different areas of nursing to persue that I'm sure you will find what makes you happy. After you have given it an honest attempt (after school) if you don't find what you are looking for move on. I'm sure every nurse will tell you that everyday is not tea and roses but I think you will find something that makes you happy.

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I know exactly how you feel...I felt that way. I graduated from nursing school in June 2002. When I started clinicals, I hated it, every minute of it. That is, when I was on those floors like med/surg. We even had to do a rotation through a nursing home. I really hated that. But all the while I knew that a change was coming. I knew I wasn't designed to work on a med/surg floor. I knew the ICU or IMC wasn't for me. I knew that second semester I would go through peds, L&D, mother/baby, psych, that sort of thing. I LOVED the second semester. I did clinicals in a smaller hospital than the one I work in now. Those nurses were older, burnt out and down right HATEFUL! That's when I vowed I wouldn't work in that hospital. I moved to a city with a large teaching hospital. I started with the largest group of new grads that had ever started together at that hospital. For the first year or so everything was great. I loved what I did, and who I worked with. Up until about 6 months ago, there was only 1 nurse I didn't like working with, and believe it or not, she only had one more year experience than I did. Well, a bunch of the girls I started with have moved away now, leaving the senior nurses who have recently become quite unhelpful and aggravating most of the time. My point here is, I don't regret finishing school. I LOVE my work (peds hem/onc), I LOVE nursing. I just need to find better team work...you'll get through it. Stick it out another year. See if a specialty is right for you. If you have instructors telling you to start in med/surg...DON'T LISTEN TO THEM! I had an instructor tell me I was crazy to start where I did, that I needed to work med/surg for a year and then transfer. I would have quit by now had I done that. I think you'll find a specialty is right for you!

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Specializes in ED, PCU, Addiction, Home Health.
Wow Dawn this is powerful! Thank you. Can you give us the title of the tape?

Sure! I got it off ebay to listen to when I walk........

"Great Minds of Medicine" on tape by Simon & Schuster

The ISBN is 067104723X

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Specializes in Home Health, Primary Care.

Hey, is anyone besides me wondering where is the person who posted the OP? Haven't heard a peep from her. Hope she hasn't already quit. Here are all these people rooting for her to stick with it. :) Just a thought!

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LOL Lady...I knew I had to respond when I saw that one! No, I have not quit yet, studying myself to death! I would like to thank everyone for the encouragement, it is nice to know that others have been where I am and pushed through it...that is what I intend to do. I am looking forward to trying my hand at some specialties soon, I am on the floor for 3 more weeks and then I go to ER, GI lab and ambulatory care, so it will be nice to get off the floor and hopefully get a lot of practice at IV sticks!! Sorry for the patients, lol. School is so dang stressful, especially since I have 2 nursing tests this week on Thursday, Psych nursing and Med-surg....the teachers said it was impossible for either of them to move their test. Our third tests in each class fall on the same day too, a month from now! I think they are trying to kill us!! Plus I have to write a process paper for each class due in a few weeks, put together a reminiscence therapy for pts with dementia by this Wed! That is probably why I am on mental breakdown right now! Again thank you everyone for your support! I'm sticking around..they can't get rid of me that easily!!

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Lilbiskit, let me suggest that your problem is found here:

"I decided to go to school for nursing because I like helping people"

While this sounds noble and good, it's goofy to study nursing (or practice nursing) because of a desire to help people. In the first place, most folks don't want to be helped -- they want their problems solved. If you view your nursing practice as a means to solve problems, you will find yourself much, much happier. I basically see what I do as a means to solve problems for people (who pay me reasonably well to do it), and I'm good at it, certified and all.

(No offense, ladies, but men seem to instinctively understand what I'm talking about. Women often feel like they have to make excuses for not desiring to be the lady with the lamp).

I went into nursing for a couple of reasons, given here in no particular order:

1. I knew there would always be work available.

2. I knew that for the forseeable future (the nursing shortage has been around since 1930, and it's not going anywhere) I would be able to live where I wanted to live.

3. I could live with the money. (I make a good income. I work from home, see my kids a lot, and don't work all that hard most of the time)

4. I knew there was the chance to be self-employed. I've been on my own part-time since 1980, and full-time since 1982.

5. I get the chance to provide solutions to problems, and even solve mysteries in one sense. It's fun.

One final thought: school often stinks. While it's a hoop you have to jump through to get to nursing practice, don't imagine that it's necessarily an accurate reflection of what you will see in practice. Do the very best you can do there, but don't sweat it. And when burnout occurs (it often does in school) go out and watch a movie. Or something. Just get away from school.

And don't take yourself too seriously. I would strongly encourage you to stick with it, and go on into nursing. You will find that the best nurses are often those who had severe doubts. But stick with it. Nursing has a huge panorama of specialties to pick from. I think you'll find one you like.

Jim Huffman, RN

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Specializes in Home Health, Primary Care.

Yaaaaah!! :chuckle She's still with us!! That a girl!!!

Those teachers are lying about it being "impossible" to move those exams. They know exactly what they are doing. They are trying to break you, but you show them you are UNBREAKABLE!!! I'm really glad you are still hanging in there. Keep it up and tough it out.

Take care.

Toni

:)

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