To become a nurse or not

Nurses Career Support

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hello all,

i graduated from college about a little over 2 years ago with a degree in computer science. i graduated with a 3.9gpa overall and with a minor in math. i was hired into by at&t directly as a manager and now i'm a project manager for research and development in san ramon, ca. (bay area). i'm watching the trend and people are being replaced like crazy. we are outsourcing by the thousands. i actually had to learn some hindu to talk to some of my offshore workers. when i started college, i originally did pre-med and i avoided nursing because at the time the dotcoms where a better career. i make about 60k a year and i live in the bay area, where a 1 bedroom apartment on the cheap side cost $1100. average house price is 700k. my fiancé is a nursing student and the offers she has seen from her friends in this area range from $67,910 - $250,000 (lots of plastic surgery centers here) for new grads. plus there are just more jobs and better job security in the nurse field. i don't want to go back to school to go the doctor route; however, i can go to the local community college and bypass more then half of the pre-reqs and all the ge requirements. should i consider getting an associate of science in nursing? and is it something i can get going to school part time? i have to maintain my 40 hour work week to support my fiancé.

hello all,

i graduated from college about a little over 2 years ago with a degree in computer science. i graduated with a 3.9gpa overall and with a minor in math. i was hired into by at&t directly as a manager and now i'm a project manager for research and development in san ramon, ca. (bay area). i'm watching the trend and people are being replaced like crazy. we are outsourcing by the thousands. i actually had to learn some hindu to talk to some of my offshore workers. when i started college, i originally did pre-med and i avoided nursing because at the time the dotcoms where a better career. i make about 60k a year and i live in the bay area, where a 1 bedroom apartment on the cheap side cost $1100. average house price is 700k. my fiancé is a nursing student and the offers she has seen from her friends in this area range from $67,910 - $250,000 (lots of plastic surgery centers here) for new grads. plus there are just more jobs and better job security in the nurse field. i don't want to go back to school to go the doctor route; however, i can go to the local community college and bypass more then half of the pre-reqs and all the ge requirements. should i consider getting an associate of science in nursing? and is it something i can get going to school part time? i have to maintain my 40 hour work week to support my fiancé.

i can definitely related to that ! i too have bsc degree & did it before and rode through the .com golden years just to found out the it career is so insecure. basically, everybody places bets on who will be let go tomorrow. i was let go when it was the least unexpected (they let go my boss, they let go my people and i was alone running a multinational it dept.) anyway, there are still people out there dreaming about the it industry.

now i'm a nurse and i can tell you nursing is a very different career. it has been very difficult for me from day one because my way of thinking is way different from theirs. for example, you and i know in computers / and \ and two different things with different ascii values. in nursing, there is no exact science so / and \ can be the same, different or somwhat related. i also found out it is very furstrated to see a lack of utilizing technologies in the field, which can be simply solved by using some simple computing techniques. you will find redundant (and also inaccurate) information, scattered information and lack of necessary information daily. for most part, the work flow (except those hospitals using electronic documentation) is very old fashioned.

am i going to change it? no, i don't think so. i'm just a staff nurse and know that more i say, the more trouble i can get. i enjoy the secured career though i'm earning much less than before. i enjoy the caring of my patients though i hate the documentation. similar to it, there are also all sorts of problems in nursing. but it will be unable to compare an apple to an orange.

btw, you will also need to know how to work with your female coworkers. i doubted myself when i first started but it turned out that i have a great working relationship with most of my female coworkers. i noticed that most female nurses welcome male nurses into the unit.

unfortunately, i don't have a good recommendation for your career change, especially where you live in a high cost of living area. when i did my career change, i used the estate money from my dad as schooling and living expenses while i worked part time and my wife worked part as well. we cut our expenses to the bottom so we could live off this period of time.

best of luck and hope this helps. :)

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Hi! This message is for all of you nurses in general. I just completed my 1st year of teaching and it was nothing how I had expected. My first love was to be a nurse because I am compassionate and care about helping people. The idea of medicine knowledge and medical diagnoses never really interested me, though. Was that enough reason to believe I was being unrealistic when it came down to nursing and what it entails? I truly appreciate any advice/words of wisdom you could share.

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Specializes in Telemetry, OR, ICU.
Hi! This message is for all of you nurses in general. I just completed my 1st year of teaching and it was nothing how I had expected. My first love was to be a nurse because I am compassionate and care about helping people. The idea of medicine knowledge and medical diagnoses never really interested me, though. Was that enough reason to believe I was being unrealistic when it came down to nursing and what it entails? I truly appreciate any advice/words of wisdom you could share.

If I understand you correctly, you did not pursue a nursing career due to not wanting to deal with medical diagnosis, nor did you desire to learn about medicine in general?

Well, nurses do not deal directly with a medical diagnosis, nor do we directly deal with the science of medicine, so to speak. Of course, we must of a good basic understanding of such, yet the nursing model & medical model are two seperate entities.

What part of nursing is it that you think interest you?

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Hi! This message is for all of you nurses in general. I just completed my 1st year of teaching and it was nothing how I had expected. My first love was to be a nurse because I am compassionate and care about helping people. The idea of medicine knowledge and medical diagnoses never really interested me, though. Was that enough reason to believe I was being unrealistic when it came down to nursing and what it entails? I truly appreciate any advice/words of wisdom you could share.

IMHO, you will be disappointed in nursing. I think if all you love is to be compassionate and to help people, you'd better be a CNA (if lower income is not an issue for you). I was a CNA before I became a nurse. I have to say I spent more time with my patients helping them when I was a CNA. Now as a nurse, I'm stuck with lots of paper work, politics, BS but little bed side care. You do need the medical knowledge to be successful in nursing, or you will be shooting in the dark and your patients will be in danger.

My personal experience is it will be very hard to imagine what nursing is like until you are really working as a nurse. Your clinical rotations in nursing school will not, I repeat, will NOT give you a full picture of the nursing life. You may want to jump to the "First year in nursing" forum to get a better idea about those struggling in their first year after graduation.

To put it in a fun way, I think the great nursing candidates are octopus, in which they have 8 arms to take care of at least 8 patients at the same time. The poorest candidates will be koalas, they sleep 16 hours a day and they are too lazy.

I'm still in my first year struggle so I don't have much wisdom to share. But I hope this reply will help some.

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Hi Corvette Guy and AC439,

The part of nursing that interests me is being able to take good, quality care of people when they are sick, have had surgery, or have given birth to a baby. I know being knowledgable with the medications/diagnoses is part of the job and I would study it and know it enough so that a patient's life would not be put in danger. It's just not the part I get "excited" about when I think about becoming a nurse. Does it still sound like something I should research more, or do you think I really would be disappointed in a nursing career? What were the main reasons you decided to choose nursing? Thanks!

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Hi Corvette Guy and AC439,

The part of nursing that interests me is being able to take good, quality care of people when they are sick, have had surgery, or have given birth to a baby. I know being knowledgable with the medications/diagnoses is part of the job and I would study it and know it enough so that a patient's life would not be put in danger. It's just not the part I get "excited" about when I think about becoming a nurse. Does it still sound like something I should research more, or do you think I really would be disappointed in a nursing career? What were the main reasons you decided to choose nursing? Thanks!

Yep, that was my reason to choose nursing too - to take care of sick people. But I think the trend is that nurses are getting more into paper work instead of bed side care. My biggest disappointment, as I mentioned in my previous post, is the tremendous amount of paper work. I suggest that you may want to explore more by seeking a volunteer position (again if money is not an issue) in a hospital. Ask that you will be rotated into different units. That way, you may be able to get a closer look to it before you decide. After all, going into nursing school is a big investment. And also let me mention that nursing school is also a very harsh environment too. You may visit the nursing student forum for more info. I recommend more research before you make a committment. I am sure many people will say:- "Great ! you want to be a nurse !" but here I'm just being honest.

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