Trying to decide on a nursing career

Nurses Career Support

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Hi all,

I am new to this website but I just had a few questions regarding becoming a nurse. I currently am not in school. I want to do nursing as a career but I don't want to do bedside nursing. I just read a few posts and I see a lot of people saying they're exhausted and burn out and cry on the way to work (something I don't want a part of). I know I want my BSN but I also want my MSN afterwards and don't know if I should choose NP or CRNA? I believe that with either profession they prefer for you to have bedside experience which I will do to get to where I ultimately want to be in my profession... I have also considered being a travel nurse once I get my BSN but I know they also want you to have bedside experience. I'm wondering would I be able to get a job a new graduate nurse in an office or clinic rather than a hospital??? also, can you be a traveling nurse practitioner?

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You absolutely need bedside experience to be a NP. I don't see any way around that. Even as a RN or BSN, all of nursing school is bedside nursing. You have to have patient contact at some level, after you graduate you can work for insurance companies as a nurse if you don't want bedside. But I can't imagine any circumstance that you wouldn't have to deal directly with patients to become a nurse practitioner.

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Same with CRNA, you HAVE to have bedside experience.

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Specializes in Acute Care, Rehab, Palliative.

NP and CRNA both require acute/ICU experience, at least 2 years.You need spectacular grades and excellent references to get in. It is VERY competitive.I think some CRNA programs require extra prerequisites before hand.Any sort of advancement requires bedside experience since caring for patients is the whole point of nursing.If you are not interested in dealing with caring for patients you need to rethink this. You can't just skip over that part.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Travel nurses are direct care ("bedside") nurses that are contracted for a specified time to fill in for vacancies. What else would they be doing?

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