Undecided about nursing as a career

[Zac100]

I have been back and forth about whether to purse a nursing career for over a year.

I feel like if I become a nurse I'll have the chance to really make a difference in someones life and help them through a tough time.

The only problem is that, to put it bluntly, the human body freaks me out. The fact that the human brain is all just a bunch of chemical reactions and how the only reason we're alive is because oxygen is being carried throughout our body by our vein is just trippy. I have a history of fainting whenever I hear about a freak injury or something else about medicine. I don't even know how I'd make it through an anatomy lecture.

I really want to overcome this but I just don't know how. Volunteering for the local hospital doesn't open up until next spring and I really don't have any other ideas on how to overcome this.

Advice?

[KimN]

I think that your heart is definitely in the right place and having the desire to help someone in their time of need is a quality that nurses need to have. However, in my opinion the ability to have a desire to dive in as far as you can to learn about the human body and how it reacts in different situations far superceedes the before mentioned. Now entering my last year of my program, it has been my deep interest in learning about the human body that has gotten me to pass my classes and feel that I am providing responsible care to patients because I understand (to a degree, still have a lot of learning to do!) why their bodies are reacting as they are, and how I anticipate their body's reaction to be once I implement an intervention. Although I suppose it could be possible to successfully become a nurse while also being disturbed by the body's processes, I think that unfortunately it is unlikely.

Are you comfortable with having to deal with the physicalities of the human body such as fluids, etc? If not ... nursing certainly isn't for you. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of advice except that you should remember that not all nursing is done in the hospital setting. Maybe a community health job with your local government agency, working at a vaccination clinic, doctors office is more for you? At all of these work places nurses still have the ability to help people .. you don't have to work in a hospital to make a difference :)