What Is The Deal With All The Highly Educated & Professionals Becoming RNs?

[PMFB-RN]

So I pretty much always have nursing students with me. I have senior BSN students who are doing a critical care class (six 12 hours shifts), ADN students from 2 different programs doing their preceptorships (eight 12 hour shifts), ABSN students doing clinical (six 12 hour shifts), and direct entry MSN students who shadow me for a shift. In addition I come into contact with a variety of other students who are being taught by my RN co-workers. My hospital also has a "student nurse technician" program where they hire nursing students to do CNA type work. So I regularly talk to 5-10 nursing students a week and nearly always have a student with me each shift.

What I am so shocked about is the level of education of these students who are in nursing school. I can't even remember the last time I had a ADN student who didn't already have a bachelors degree with me. Of course the MSN and ABSN students already have bachelors degrees, but what is surprising to me is that so many are already professionals in others areas. I had a student who already has a bachelors and masters in architecture and worked for a well known local firm, I have had lawyers, police officers, scads of teachers, and a few engineers among others. Even a guy who is an MD in Russia.

Why do all of these people want to be nurses? Have any of you experienced this?

Back when I was in nursing school there were plenty of 2nd career types in my class but they tended to be factory workers, truck drivers, farmers, military vets who were moving up to become RNs. A few had bachelors degrees but not like now.

I actually find it frightening and a little sad. Frightening cause I suspect this is a symptom of a very bad economy and terrible job market. Sad cause I know so many of the will struggle to find work after making huge sacrifices to get through nursing school.

Some of them are SHOCKED when I tell them it's a tough job market out there for RNs and they will have to work hard and keep on their toes to find any job. Some simply refuse to believe me (nearly all the direct entry MSN students, ironic since they will struggle in our local market more than the others). Others already have this figured out and are already bitter about it.

I'm a former engineer and my career went something like this:

1) Worked for a defense contracting division of a Fortune 50 company. Lost a major contract at the same time Ronnie and Gorby started singing 'We Are the World' and poof, after surviving 4 layoffs, my number came up. By the time I stopped paying attention, they'd laid off about 60% of their folks (~750 people) and been sold three times.

2) Relocated - Drove 120 mi/day to work for a mom and pop (literally) company where 'my three sons' occupied all the management positions... never make it any higher than the lowest Mr/Mrs A... and where every dime you want to spend or earn comes straight out of Mr A's pocket. Revolving door because Mr A was a volatile man who regularly threatened people. After Mr A Junior took me aside and said, "Well, you've been here for awhile and we really have nothing to show for it" I decided to move on.

3) Great job, 5 miles from home with my new bride. Newly acquired division of a HUGE defense contractor moving into environmental services.... money being thrown about with abandon, hiring like crazy... I was in a position to see the P/L on each job and saw only "L's"... This during the early millenium boom time. I knew the end was coming at some point (used to liken it to musical chairs... and didn't want to be left standing when the music stopped). At the all-hands before the holiday shut-down the boss said, "And when we get back, there will be a 25% RIF across the board... Merry Christmas." He was true to his word. A few more got the ax in the ensuing months before the HUGE company decided to divest and refocus... and sold the joint to the boss man and his cronies (can you say, 'underfunded' and see #2?) I had a great opportunity to jump ship and jump I did.

4) Relocated - A division of one of the world's big oil companies... If you're on the Gulf, you may still be seeing their oil washing up... right when they were going green. Very good job, being very successful, working with a great group of folks on cutting-edge technology... only to discover over time that it had some serious flaws... and, as my plant manager used to say, "we had more revenue in 24 hours on my North Sea rig than this division has for an entire year." Good perspective... basically, good for marketing but essentially just a pimple on Lord Brown's butt... one which he decided to ax when he needed to cut some costs to make the numbers... the manufacturing plant in India remained but ours was closed... poof, no job.

5) Found a local job for another mom/pop... crappy little place that screwed its customers and employees alike... running pirated software... doing work I was unqualified for because (a) it needed doing and (b) I had no other alternatives... sat in on meetings where blatant ageism came out... and me just turning the corner of 40... I worked with a shell of a man who'd fallen from the heights of working for Apple and was now stuck at this craphole... he was miserable... and I would ultimately be him... As the boss said, "We don't need to give him a raise... he can't go anywhere else." He had a massive MI and now I was him. Holy crap. got so depressed I couldn't even bring myself to brush my teeth. Ewww.

6) Salvation... a start-up with whom I'd interviewed years before called me up... they wanted me... mixed blessing, though... they were almost out of money and were installing equipment in China with the plan to ultimately source everything there... and park their earnings offshore. Meaning no long-term but could make a ton in the short term, learn a lot, and get stock options (play angelic sounds here... stock options are one of the end-game plans of engineers). Worked my tail end off, spent a year traveling 3 weeks out of 4, only to be laid off as soon as my Chinese counterpart was up to speed. It also turned out that the technology wasn't nearly as far along as everybody had thought... and the venture capitalists basically diluted the stock to the point that my option shares were essentially worthless (and required $20,000 to exercise on the way out the door). Oh yeah, in addition to the brutal travel, being home meant 'only' commuting 160 miles per day.

Looked around and couldn't find anything... applied for a job doing something for which I had some experience... "um, well, no.... how 'bout the entry-level job?" Me, "sure... sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, even..." (not exactly but you get the point... I'll do whatever I have to in order to work.) Interview for that and... no offer.

Meanwhile, there's a nursing shortage, right? There are several big hospitals around here employing thousands of nurses. I'd been 'inside the bedrails' enough to have a limited view of a nurse's life. I asked two nurses I know to talk me out of it and neither tried very hard. The university at which I'd gone through the chemistry program (and tutored a bunch of BSN students) had recently started a DEMSN program (no lotto, no waitlist... just 'may the best person win' admissions). I got in and that was the beginning.

Why nursing instead of engineering?

+ RELATIVE job security. Lots of folks older than me at my hospital. Lots of folks making it to retirement.

+ Good pay... My hourly rate is now better (much) than any of my engineering jobs... even adjusted for inflation...

+ Non-exempt... Sure, I was nominally a 9-5, M-F employee... except that when you've got deadlines and fixed budgets, and you're a salaried chump, you do what you have to do in order to meet your goals... whether or not they're realistic. I worked lots of 12-hour days and lots of 60-hr weeks... but never got paid for all those hours...

+ Minimal education required... I hear many nurses decry 'the hell that was nursing school' and that horrible NCLEX. Straight up, nursing education is a cake-walk compared to engineering education. That's not a commentary on nurses and certainly not a value statement but just the observation of someone who has done them both.

+ Collective bargaining... nursing is one of the few disciplines easily open to me where collective bargaining is still relatively common. As I move into the latter part of my working life, I want to operate with a well-defined set of rules and under a contract of employment rather than as an at-will employee whose job is only as good as the next contract or until the boss's kid/grandkid needs 'my' job.

Nursing also offers the opportunity to work with some really interesting and intelligent people as well as to provide a service which is sometimes very satisfying and meaningful.

Why are there so many highly educated, professional people transitioning into nursing? I don't know but I imagine that many of them are doing so for the same reason I did... a pretty decent job doing work that matters with a fairly modest investment of time and energy to get there.

[dirtyhippiegirl, BSN, RN]

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the advanced practice bubble bursts. (Which it already has in my area. Not just jobs, but students unable to find preceptors as well because our area is saturated with NP and CRNA schools.) Then we'll have a lot of highly educated nurses...forced to work at the bedside, I guess.

[DoGoodThenGo]

It just seems terrably inefficient to double educate so many people. What kind of society are we creating that such a large number of people must be educated TWICE to have a middel class lifestyle.

On seperate note. Nurses pay should NOT be compaired to other fields with far less responsibiliety. Nurses wages have been declining for a number of years now. If you want to compair our wages it needs to be compaired to an occupation with a similar level of responsibiliety. Nurses wages are LOW relitive to the level of responsibiliety we have.

Meanwhile nurses are trying to get out of bedside nursing and change careers into NPs, CRNAs, etc. Not exactly out of nursing but pretty much out of nursing.

Do not think it is terribly inefficient at all.

If many persons knew then what they know now they perhaps would have made different career choices including college majors. Persons in their forties and even fifties today couldn't have foretold the extent technology would change the American workplace and make even former safe professions such as law and architecture very unstable employment wise.

Generation X, the late "Baby Boom" generation having been children during the recession/economic upheaval of the 1970's, then graduated high school and or college to enter the poor employment market and another recession in the 1980's know all to well about career change and adapting to the situation on the ground. These were some of the first college graduates told they no longer should expect to work at one company their entire career. Rather instead of being say a "Saint Vincent's nurse" consider themselves a nurse who happens to be working at Saint Vincent's hospital.

Like the man says in that film "get busy living, or get busy dying". Today's employment market is all about adaptability and staying ahead of the game.

Yeah, I've run into a number of NP students struggling to find preceptors. And a lot of the clinic NPs aren't earning anywhere near what the bedside RNs are. I know one who works 2 days per week thriving at big blue to earn her keep and a third day at a clinic which pays hobby-level wages.

[DoGoodThenGo]

Very interesting thread for a 49 year old beginning her ADN program this August. While I do intend to further my education to my BSN and possibly MSN, as a new grad in Virginia with lots of medical facilities I certainly hope to be employed soon after getting my ADN. The educational snobbery of ADNs vs. BSNs vs. MSNs in the workplace seems very immature and childish and I'm hoping I don't see that in my future workplace. If a twenty something BSN/MSN tells me to go clean up her patient because she is more educated than I, we may have an issue.

There is nothing wrong with going for your ADN and then doing RN-BSN and so forth. Long as your local area is hiring Associate degree nurses in theory you shouldn't have a problem.

OTOH in some areas like much of NYC ADN new grads often cannot get a foot around the hospital door. This puts a kink in the RN-BSN via tuition reimbursement model, and thus many find themselves having to go for their BSN on their own dime.

[DoGoodThenGo]

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the advanced practice bubble bursts. (Which it already has in my area. Not just jobs, but students unable to find preceptors as well because our area is saturated with NP and CRNA schools.) Then we'll have a lot of highly educated nurses...forced to work at the bedside, I guess.

Don't know if the WH and Obamacare really thought the push to produce more AP nurses out carefully. For one thing unless the federal government is somehow going to force all states to expand AP nurse's scope of practice their functions can remain limited and not able in a large way to address the physician shortage "problem".

[Destin293]

Well, I am a second career RN....was a SW for state govt for several years before going to nursing school. A lot of you may not believe this.....but some jobs actually suck worse than nursing!!! For me, that SW position was killing me. I love nursing. LOVE IT! I was mature enough to know exactly what I wanted going into it, and exactly what I did not want. I choose not to work nights, maneuver super large people, or deal with lots of the stuff I consider "yucky". Working in an ASC and now outpatient endoscopy is just about as perfect as any job could be!!

There are many of us who are thoughtful, mature, introspective, well educated and go in to nursing as a second career simply because we WANT to! Love my job!

Also, although RNs will never be super-wealthy- there really should be no whining about the pay. Have you taken a look at what many agencies (not hospitals) pay MSWs or CADCs? Master's Degree and $16 per hour?? And that work is HARD.

Those of you who hate nursing so much or think it is too hard and not worth the $ should do what so many of us 2nd "careerers" have done....jump ship, hit the books and go do what you truly love. It is totally worth it!

Cheers!

Agree, agree, agree, agree!!!!!!! I have to grin when I hear people say nursing is hard and the money isn't that great for what's required, because it's obvious they have never worked in social services. Of any career field requiring higher education, social services is probably the lowest of the low. The work is hard and the pay is awful. You still deal with short staffing and long hours, but you're making half of what a nurse makes. I had a case load of over 200 crime victims when I was an advocate, I was tied to my blackberry even on vacation, I had to take days off just to go into the office to get paperwork done without having new cases added, my workdays were 7 hours, but I never worked less than 10 each day...and the pay was $32,000 in NYC. To become a social worker, you need a masters -- you'll be lucky if you can find a job for $50,000 and your options are limited after that point. Think about what a masters in any other field will pay. And when the economy tanks, social services takes the biggest hit and it is NOT easy to find a job after you've been laid off in social services.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the advanced practice bubble bursts. (Which it already has in my area. Not just jobs, but students unable to find preceptors as well because our area is saturated with NP and CRNA schools.) Then we'll have a lot of highly educated nurses...forced to work at the bedside, I guess.

When I finished my MN there were more MNs per capita working bedside in the city where we lived than anywhere else in the country. It was awesome working side by side with people like that and the quality of care was truly excellent. Many of us just liked the city so much we were happy working as independent contractors via agencies (there were two good ones and we got good money and all the time we needed off prn).

"Forced" sounds as if we hated it and it was drudgery that was beneath us; none of that was true. Just because one has a master's degree in nursing doesn't automatically mean your attitude is one of abhorrence for bedside care, especially if that's where the work is. See, a lot of these one-year-MN-wonders are going to be in bedside care anyway for a greater or lesser period of time. Many will discover their education makes it better, not lesser.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

And you know what is a complication of this in our current economy: You got some very unsatisfied and bitter educated people who are so entitled and just realize they could not get the "juice" or "financial promises" of nursing. Then they become office bullies, gossips, backstabbers, calluses, heartless nurses, etc... I am from a generic BSN and I am working with 2 RNs who went to an accelerated program bc they already had a bachelor. So I assume they feel it harder than me in term of "getting tricked" into nursing. They make my working day really unpleasant because they complain and act vicious "professionally" at work on a daily basis. It is bc we all have a low-salary non-traditional nursing positions at an outpatient private practice. While I attempt at least to find the reasons to enjoy this job even tho it was not my first choice, the others feel like hell everyday bc they feel like they are stuck here. I don't know if they think they are more educated and "high-class" workers bc they have double Bachelors or what; they are really entitled, "we are nurses, we don't do this or that". They act really mean to MAs n front desk receptionists. I know it's horrible but sometimes I feel like life serves them right that they could not get a job in the hospital like they want.

But yeah I shouldn't criticize others when I am not doing good myself either. My original dream for nursing was I had a fixed schedule of three 12s shifts in a row/week in the ICU, where I can feel smart and intellectually challenged. So the rest 4 days off I pursue my true passion in Art. And of course I would get pay well and make significant impacts on people's life too. Nursing was awesome like that in my mind.;I was naive in my freshman year and thought that all it'd take is to get in nursing school with high GPA. So I worked for almost perfect GPA to get into nursing school. Then when I got into nursing school, hearing all about the hardship of working as a nurse and the reality of "First semester's foundation clinical". Instead of getting the heck out at the beginning, I endured more and jumped more hoops for my ICU pseudo-dream: my program was pretty tough and I spent more time and money to get externships in dursing Summer, you know the types of clinical that you have to pay for to be nurses' slave. Then of course the NCLEX and blah blah blah. What did I get out of it? 4 months of endless applications and unemployment + ended up at a private practice where the Dr. Boss who wants to trade my blood for his money and my miserable co-workers who like to drag ppl down with them. Can't get out bc I have owed so much to pursue this pseudo-dream. Would all of my hard works ever get paid off? I would never work in the ICU now let alone so much of having any time to do Art on the side.

If I could turn back time, I would rather just do Art for all the joy and happiness. Then now yes I would end up with a very low page job or no job at all, same situation, but you know what at least I have done what I truly love at heart and will be surrounded with very passionate people who are brave enough to be true to themselves. Really, nurses, all I hear is complaints, abuse, burn-out, dramas, mistreats. Only few very old nurses once in a while I found are truly amazing and inspirational, the rest of nursing, a whole mess of whining. Not at the points like my friends who cry after their shifts everyday but I am indeed depressed and cynical. The next time I hear ppl talk about how nurses have it easy and nursing shortage, I might go postal....

Please please, do others or at least yourself a favor, do not enter nursing as your second career because it is so not worth it for the money or for anything at all. Period. I am a living proof of it. And yes, others have told me the exact same words before and I did not believe them and so do you my friends, victims of the "nursing shortage" black hole.

Many burnt out hospital nurses would love to work in a clinic! I take it the friends crying after their shifts are working in hospitals! Just because you are working in a clinic now doesn't mean you couldn't still get into a hospital job eventually, but then you may find it too stressful and crying too. You may find you long for the good old days in the clinic.

But if you still want to get into the hospital just keep trying, you never know you may just become an ICU RN eventually.

[MissM.RN, BSN, RN]

Lori - Be prepared for those "twenty something BSN" nurses to do just that (clean up a patient) because she will be your charge nurse - not because of a BSN.

[PMFB-RN, RN]

The educational snobbery of ADNs vs. BSNs vs. MSNs in the workplace seems very immature and childish and I'm hoping I don't see that in my future workplace. .

You will be happy to know that the ADN vs BSN vs MSN issues really only exsists here not in the workplace. You will work with wonderful nurses and not so great nurses and you won't be able to tell what degree they have by how good they are, or are not.

[JeanettePNP, MSN, RN, NP]

As a second-career nurse myself, I would tell professionals who are struggling to stick with where they are and wait for opportunities to open up, rather than jump into a new career and have to start over from the ground up.

I have actually achieved a nice balance... working 3 days a week as an NP and 2 days a week in my previous career (free-lance writing/editing). The biggest problem with freelance writing was finding enough work to fill up my time and bring in enough income, and now that problem is solved.