To Quit or Not to Quit

[DustBunnies]

I hope I've put this in the right place, but I'm looking for advice/experience from those who have been through the ropes of nursing school/starting out.

I'm at the end of my second semester of nursing school. I go to a really competitive school, it's actually pretty decent in terms of instruction, however the standards are higher than high. The high standards aren't my biggest problem though.

To give some background, I wanted to get into nursing when my father had open heart surgery. He had a roommate who had just had heart surgery as well, he was in his 70's and had just lost his wife in the same week. My heart really went out to the guy. I talked with him a lot. It was that moment when suddenly you're not just sympathizing for someone, you feel empathy, too. I wanted to help people in that way.

I'm a very mellow person, not much grosses me out, I'm pretty competant. I can be pretty tough when I need to be (even though I am a very petite girl) I thought those would be good qualities to make a career for myself.

After a year of nursing school, my father was diagnosed with cancer. I took care of him basically completely alone at that time, I sat up with him for 20 hours of the day and slept 4 hours a night for 3 months.

This year we started clinical rotations. The nursing home was okay. Bed pans, changing linens, bed baths, were all okay, it's not exactly stellar-fun stuff. But I did it and I liked the patients.

This semester... I've only had 3 clinicals in med-surg and I am considering quitting. I can't even put a finger on exactly why. My first day, I had a patient with 25 meds (I had to know everything about said meds off the top of my head after only recieving my assignment the night before), 20 diagnoses (same story as the meds) and it was the first time I had to give both subq and IM injections. I also had to know the new computer system for charting, where to find things, all that jazz. I recieved a poor grade for the day, which was very discouraging considering that I was doing my absolute best with what little experience I had. I didn't struggle with the knowledge, I just wasn't confident in where to find things, how to do the new skills, etc. I thought everyone else was in the same boat with me, but they all recieved good grades for the day. It just made me feel like maybe I rub people the wrong way, or really am incompetant at what I'm doing.

I find myself dreading clinical. I think what got me thinking most about quitting is how relieved I have been this week. It's my spring break and I realized I was ELATED to not have to go to clinical.

I've read/heard so much about nurses burning out, or hating the job once they are in it. I think I read that it was 1 in 5 new grads quit? I just feel as though maybe there is a good reason for that.

The thing is, I don't have the usual gripes about nursing school. I can handle the workload academically speaking. But I would gladly take 5 pharmacology tests over going to clinical.

I love the patients, I love talking to them. I love talking to their family (usually... lol) I can be very gregarious and upbeat with patients. But I am not excited like the other students about giving injections, or passing meds. One of my classmates was talking about how it was exciting to do chest compressions in the ICU when someone coded. The idea of being excited by something like that baffles me. To me, that's something that I need to do and I'll do it, but I will be no means ENJOY IT. Those things are things I HAVE to do, grit my teeth and bear it.

I do love the patients. I am holding out on the hope that maybe things get easier, or that I will get more used to it once I really get going at it. That I'll just suddenly stop dreading it one day. That's the only hope I have right now for sticking through it. I am giving myself to the end of the semester/some CNA work this summer to really decide. But for money/my sanity's sake, I would like to make a decision before the fall semester.

Did anyone here go through this when they were first learning? Just totally and utterly hating stepping foot in a hospital? I just worry that I am throwing money/time/emotional investment into something I am not meant to be happy in.

[Jean1313]

I have to agree with the poster who noted that there is nursing beyond med-surg. IMHO, it was one of my hardest rotations, and we did 6 months of it in school! I am working in it now, and I just finished a 12 hr (14 hr!) shift of almost everything that could go wrong...

But there are areas, like Psych, where you may have more time to really get to know the pt. You still do meds, but you become quickly familiar. You will have the occasional medical train wreck, but they get "stabilized" by the medical hospital first. That's only one suggestion...

I guess I fit in the "hang in there" group. As you do other rotations, I'm almost certain you'll have that "I want to be this kind of nurse" thought.

Good luck!!

[jjjoy, LPN]

If you stick it out you will have a great career to at least fall back on and you won't be kicking yourself in the hiney ten years from now for giving up too soon.

If you really can't stand floor nursing, don't get that initial two years of experience, and don't ever plan on being a floor nurse again (cuz you know you wouldn't last more than 2 months before having to choose between the job and sanity), having that RN license isn't as much as a "fall back" option as it would be otherwise. It'd be like having a teaching credential but hating to spend all day every day cooped up in a classroom with rowdy kids.

The nursing license and background still could open more doors professionally but it wouldn't hold the same leverage as having the clinical experience and competence in addition to the license.

That being said, OP, I do think it's likely too soon to make a decision. There's a lot more ground to cover in your program and you might find an area that feels right to you. I do think it's a great idea to get some work experience as an aide or nurse extern. Regardless of what you ultimately decide, the more experience you have, the more information you'll have about your strengths, weaknesses, preferences, dislikes, etc that can help you make choices in the future. Remember that even if you are doubting that nursing is for you, you can still make the most of all the learning opportunities and experiences available to you as a nursing student.

If you decide that nursing really isn't your cup of tea, then there are still other factors to consider before quitting, I think. For example, if you're in a BSN program and have just one more year to go and don't know what else you'd rather be pursuing, might as well finish up if you can. Having a bachelor's degree in and of itself is valuable and the nursing education gives you a background (knowledge about health care, meds, psych issues, etc) that might give you a leg up in applying for certain non-nursing jobs. On the other hand, if you're in a very expensive private RN program then it might make more sense to cut your losses and save your money for later after you find another path.

Best wishes to you! I hope you find more clarity!

[ERjodiRN]

i am glad that someone like purple scrubs offered a different position on things. ya, it may have made things more confusing for you, but it's the truth. nursing isn't for everyone. in no way am i telling you to quit because of how you're feeling now. like purple scrubs, i did really well in my clinicals and theory courses, always receiving positive feedback and being told i'm a natural. however, i HATED going to clinicals. the only time i ever really liked going was when i was going to the ICU or the OR, where the patients are typically intubated or knocked out on meds and unable to speak. this makes me sound like a horrible person, but it's the truth. i enjoyed peds a lot, and thought that that is what i wanted to do. i didn't like adult or geriatric nursing, and absolutely HATED med/surg. when i graduated nursing school in 2002, i didn't want to jump right in to the profession as my career just yet. i was 20yrs old, and not quite ready for it. i didn't even take my boards until 2004! i started on a fast/paced med/surg ER extension type unit and ended up absolutely loving it. the same feelings that i had in the very beginning of nursing school...the feelings that we all get.......had come back to me. and i wasn't even working with kids! the only reason i chose not to do peds at that time was because i had been out for so long, even though i had been doing my bachelors in the interim, and was wanting to get my feet wet again. i stayed there for just over a year until i got to where i am now.....in the ER. i absolutely LOVE my job. i love the patients, even when they are able to talk and and up whining the entire time they are under my care. I love taking care of the old demented ladies from nursing homes who require a lot of time that i rarely have. and i get a lot of peds patients as well. i honestly couldn't see myself doing much of anything else at this point in my life. you mentioned that you couldn't understand how someone "loved" doing compressions.....that you would have to grit your teeth and bare it if you had to. maybe you're just looking at it that wrong way. you obviously have a lot of compassion for people, so you view a code as the end of someone, where all other measures have failed. you like taking care of people and seeing them getter better, not worse. i'll be honest in that i can't even say that 50% of the codes i've been involved in have made it. but those few that have......it's an amazing feeling. especially when you learn later that they were able fully recover with no brain damage! those compressions were a vital part of their healthcare, and they wouldn't have made it without them.....just like giving around the clock antibiotics or dressing changes to someone with a severe infection or wound. the first code i ever witnessed was on a patient at my first job. he was what we called a "lifer". he had been on our unit for months. too sick to go home or to a facility, but not sick enough to upgrade to a different floor. one day he coded, and we lost him. he was actually a patient that most of the staff members dreaded caring for. mrsa/vre/cdiff isolation, 3 stage4 ulcers, quadrapalegic, mentally disabled, trach.....you name it, he had it. but he had such a kind soul, and we all really loved him deep down. a good portion of us went to his funeral. so you see.....even though you do things you don't like in this profession, the good times always outweigh the bad because it's a profession that is rewarding beyond belief. again, maybe it's not for you and that is something you will have to search within yourself for.....but i have a feeling you're made for it. your confidence has taken a hit and i feel that is why you dread clinicals now. use your resources. talk to your fellow students and more importantly your instructor if you don't feel you were adequately prepared for what they were grading you on. and by that i mean you don't feel it was a fair situation to have received a poor grade when given such a tough patient. i hope you keep with it.....but there are other areas where you can help people if that is what you truly want to do!

[SteffersRN87, BSN, RN]

A few things...

#1 - Most people dread med/surg! It is a very hard rotation, but you will learn a lot.

#2 - You can't be great and awesome from the start, and you must have something to learn and build on.

#3 - I once had a patient with 40some meds, so I feel your pain.

Just stick with it. If the instructor notices a problem, she will probably talk with you about it.

[detroitdano]

Med-surg, as it's been put many times on my floor, is the armpit of nursing. Nobody truly enjoys working med-surg. They may enjoy the freedom from endless alarms and hourly charting, but no one loves it, at least anyone I know of.

I've done 22 months of externing on a med-surg unit, something like 3000 hours or so, and when I graduate I will throw myself off a bridge before working on the unit as an RN. I love my manager and coworkers, but the patient load and the treatment from doctors who think med-surg nurses are low-level incompetent peons makes the day hard on you.

As a student it can be difficult because the patients are needy nonstop. You might get 4 patients that have 20 meds each, all due at 9 AM when you just started at 7. In real practice you can ask for help from other staff when you need, which is something you can't do in clinical. As a student in intro med-surg you're responsible for nurse assistant and registered nurse duties which is a poor setup since in reality it is not this way. You'd be hard pressed to find a unit where a nurse is responsible for 5 patients meds in the morning and giving them all full bed baths. Why they treat students as both and expect you to be both with utter perfection still stumps me.

Give it time and don't freak out. Clinicals suck but it's a necessary evil to get through it. If you hate the extraneous work and lack of any free time it's not the profession that bugs you, it's how you're treated in clinical. If you hate patients and don't enjoy taking care of them you would be right in looking at a different career choice.

[DustBunnies]

Thanks so much everyone, I didn't expect so many replies so quickly and they have been so unbelievably helpful!

The patients are never a problem for me. I love people in general, sick or not. But I seem to find a niche when they are sick. The only complaint I have ever recieved about my people-skills in clinical is that I was not "bubbly enough" which came from a nurse who was all bubble-gum all the time, which to be honest would drive me crazy if I were sick. I don't look sullen or anything, I just don't think it's appropriate to be THAT kind of fake-happy. Aside from that, I do love the patients. Even the difficult ones, though they drive me up a wall.

To be honest, however, I do worry about the longterm physically. I am 5 feet tall and 95 pounds. I'm exceptionally strong for my size (almost every doctor, nurse and patient I've worked with have told me that) but I just don't see this job being able to last me beyond a certain age because of my size. I feel it will be too hard on me in the longrun if I did something like a bedside job the whole time. (I think it would be hard on anyone!) I've kind of had in the back of my head that I would work as a bedside nurse to a certain point, and then switch to another kind of nursing at some other point.

A few people mentioned this in their replies, but I am curious. I am in a BSN program at a private school. I am here on a ton of scholarships, but it is still more expensive than a state-school. I am at the end of my 2nd year, so right smack in the middle between starting and finishing. So it's very much a toss-up in terms of finances. Pretending that I did switch majors, none of my nursing classes would transfer, and my entire last year is nursing classes. So I would technically have finished only one year of school. (Better than none I suppose)

I talked to the registrar at the school about it, and in the conversation he mentioned that I can do more with a nursing degree than just nursing. If I went for a master's degree and did a couple more years of school, I could do social work in a hospital or what he called "management positions", for example. I'm just wondering if that is reliable, because he has been known to hype up nursing majors on their job to keep them in the major. (One half of our nursing class has already dropped out for one reason or another, and more are expected within the next year. It is a really intense program.) I've talked with the nursing professors here, but they only egged me on to stay in the program because I am a strong student and they think I would make a good nurse because I am so mellow and calm. Nothing about what else I could do with my 4-year degree. So I am just wondering if anyone here either knows about/has done something of that nature.

I hate quitting. As much as I hate to admit it, that is a part of it at this point. I don't want to be like everyone else who dropped out of nursing. (Though I suppose I would be the first who drops out with perfect and or passing grades.)

I am trying to get a position in a hospital near me this summer as a CNA. My dad was there for 3 weeks on a medsurg unit, and it's by far the nicest medsurg unit I've seen. The staff looked happy and their workload was not terrible. They actually had time to come in and talk to us often. They were busy, but it didn't seem like anyone was truly overwhelmed. I think finding a rare place like that might give me the good experience I could really use right now.

Again, thank you to everyone! And I don't mind at all if anyone posts about a bad experience. I need perspective from all sides, those who hate it and those who love it (or those inbetween lol) I won't think anything less of someone who posts about hating it, it's the blunt honest truth that I'm looking for. I'm looking for perspective, not encouragement necessarily lol

[ERjodiRN]

about the MSN bit our registrar told you about. you'll be hard-pressed to be the manager of anything without some sort of experience under your belt, so if you're going to change, change. would you want someone managing you who didn't have any clinical experience?

[Jean1313]

I went to a diploma school, and the rumor going around was that the Director of the program only had 6 months experience as a floor nurse! I agree with the last poster though. You probably wouldn't want to be managed by someone who hasn't "been there" but it happens.

[Mike Huster]

Well this thread conjours up all sorts of clinical horros for me. I must say I did not like my clinicals. I remember my instructor stating during the final review for the semester stating "I did not think you would make it, you surprised me." That really took me back, and made me consider what I was doing in this nursing program. A year later in the final throes of nursing school we had to write up prep sheets on each patient. I wrote mine out, my handwriting is horrible. The clinical instructor took one glance at it and said this is crap, I can't read it. He threw it back at me and asked what I was going to do? I took it home after clinical rounds in the evening, and formatted the thing into my computer and typed it all out for clinicals the next day. I did all my preps this way and gradually had enough info to cut and paste to make it easier to fill out the form over time. I suggest you stick to it, get through it, and hopefully one aspect of nursing will be your calling. Mine is orthopedics. Take care.

[DustBunnies]

Oh, when I mentioned entering a master's program, I did not mean immediately out of school. I have the same thinking that if I were to do anything with a nursing degree, it would obviously be nursing related, and I'd need experience. It is more that I would like to know that if I get out there, and start working, then end up hating it, that I can still go back to school and use all the hard work and experience I had gained to do something that I would enjoy more. If that makes sense? I have confidence that I can get through the program in one piece and be able to push myself to get the experience, but I wouldn't want to do that if in the end I hated it and had no where to go after all the schooling and experience I got in hospital.

[HM2VikingRN, RN]

Clinicals are difficult because you are integrating classroom with practice. right now you are still learning to walk. Skill integration comes with practice. Take each clinical a day at a time. I am confident that you will make it through.

[LilyBlue]

OK, I might get flamed big time for this. I am not going to give you any advice, I am only going to tell who what I wish I had done.

I felt the same way about clinicals as you do. I never really enjoyed it, but I was really good at it. I always got great feedback on my paperwork and patient care from my instructors and the staff nurses, without exception. I did very well in lectures also. I ended up with only 3 Bs and the rest As in nursing school. Somehow I always had the feeling that I had them all fooled. I was putting on a happy face and "pretending" to love what I was doing because I did not want to be a "quitter". I kept thinking maybe it would get better when I was in the real world.

Once I was in the real world, I found it even worse than clinicals. Of course, I did have a poor orientation and there were staffing issues, but I left the hospital after only 4 months. I was fortunate to find a job in school nursing, and I often say that I love my job, but if I am being 100% honest, I am only doing it because I have to. When my student loan is paid off and some other bills are paid, I will probably leave nursing for good. My former classmates, co-workers, family and friends would be shocked to hear this from me.

Nursing is hard physicially, emotionally, and mentally. It is not for everyone. Even if someone is good at it (I have never had anything but a glowing review review as a nurse or while still in school), it does not mean they are cut out for it. Nursing has been a blessing to me in many ways: I feel proud of what I have accomplished, I have gained confidence in my abilities and intellect, and have taken steps to fix some things that were wrong in my life in order to be healthier. But when it comes down to it, I just do not enjoy being a nurse. It is a paycheck. There are many, many days when I wish I would have recognized this while still in school and gotten out with a little less of the $35,000 of debt that I now have. On the other hand, if I had done that, who knows where I would be now, so hindsight is 20/20.

Sorry if this only adds to your confusion. I just thought you should see both sides of the story.

This is my story pretty much. I am a good nurse, I have wonderful clinical skills and I'm an empathetic person. But I do not like many aspects of nursing. In fact, I find many aspects of nursing truly agonizing and even in the midst of chaos, rather boring - if that makes any sense. I wish I would have listened to my inner voice a little better too.