trying to get started

First of all you need to decide what your goals are. If you want to be a nurse, are you passionate and compassionate about helping people in their time of need? Are you willing to work under stress at all times? Are you able-bodied? These are a few of the questions you must ask yourself. Hospital-based nurses are what are badly needed and if you do not like working in the hospital, then you must consider if you really want to be a nurse.

First, I would suggest that you talk to a career counselor at a community college and take some sort of aptitude test to see where your skills, values, and abilities are. Once you get the results from that, then I would suggest that you look at the occupational outlook handbook, http://www.bls.gov/OCO/ to start your research into nursing or whatever occupation that you're led to. You then may want to interview employees in your chosen field to get their perspective regarding the occupation of choice.

The other thing you could do is to go to school to become a certified nursing assistant or a medical assistant. Work in these areas would give you a feel for whether you would like working in the nursing profession.