Whatever happened to going to school to be a nurse?

Published

The other day as I sat at work listening to coworkers talking about career paths and what degrees they should pursue I couldn't help but think back to when I was a new nurse 32 years ago. I went to school to be a nurse, as everyone in my class did. The discussions were where do you want to work, not what is your career goal. It seems no one wants to just be a nurse anymore. This is all pushed with the magnet statuses, national push for more and more education and I wonder what is so bad about being a nurse caring for patients year after year. Most young nurses I hear talking are appalled at the thought of your entire nursing career caring for people. I am sure there are some new nurses who just want to take care of patients, but I haven't talked to many. I find this sad.

Moving along lightly the traditional education path does not mean skipping out on education. Use your time wisely and continue to search the market to a better job.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

For real though! My mom got her LPN in 2009 and starting pay for PN's in our area (panhandle of florida) is about 16$/hour. That is just HORRIBLE. I finished my RN a few months ago and got my first job at a sub acute care unit/skilled assisted living and make 29$/hour, where as my peers who took positions in hospitals and can very easily hurt someone, start off making 21$/hour. That is just so crappy. I believe it is part of the reason very few actually want to stay in a hospital setting... You could seriously hurt someone, or slip up and get fired/lose your license all for 21$ an hour?! So not worth it. Just thinking about being put in that position gives me anxiety.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I will preface this by saying that I am a nursing student and CNA (in homecare) and, thus, have no real world experience in the topic of direct patient care in a hospital setting. That being said, I specifically chose to return to school (I am 46) to pursue my ADN, then BSN, so that I could provide bedside care. My daughter is a double lung transplant recipient and my experience with the ICU nurses post-tx was life-changing. It is sad to me to hear that people feel that caring for patients is "beneath them." Personally, I see no other avenue that will allow me to have as great an impact on peoples lives than providing care in an acute (or any other inpatient) setting.

Perhaps it is naive, but I hope that my age and life experience will place me in a position in which I can help patients and their families. Cheers to all, and Happy Holidays!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in CVICU, MICU, Burn ICU.
I will preface this by saying that I am a nursing student and CNA (in homecare) and, thus, have no real world experience in the topic of direct patient care in a hospital setting. That being said, I specifically chose to return to school (I am 46) to pursue my ADN, then BSN, so that I could provide bedside care. My daughter is a double lung transplant recipient and my experience with the ICU nurses post-tx was life-changing. It is sad to me to hear that people feel that caring for patients is "beneath them." Personally, I see no other avenue that will allow me to have as great an impact on peoples lives than providing care in an acute (or any other inpatient) setting.

Perhaps it is naive, but I hope that my age and life experience will place me in a position in which I can help patients and their families. Cheers to all, and Happy Holidays!

It is not naive. Bless you and good luck in your journey.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Thank you very much. I truly appreciate it!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ER.

It still happens. I do think that a lot of new nurses are actually 2nd career nurses and they have realized there are other opportunities too. Nurses work many different paths.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Re: "Whatever happened to going to school to be a nurse?"

Some people (certainly most of the nurses I know) are no longer satisfied with "just being a nurse" at the bedside because the demands, expectations, and scope-of-practice of bedside Nurses are ever increasing. Meanwhile, the pay remains stagnant for the most part, workplace violence and legislation that cleverly condones abuse inflicted onto nurses by patients and families, and the nurse-to-patient ratios are configured irrationally and unsafe... and there is NO end in sight. It is getting worse by the day. This is a brief, mild example from a 2015 Toronto Star Article:

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/10/31/workplace-violence-makes-nursing-one-of-canadas-most-dangerous-professions.html

One Nurse/Human can only do so much and Nurses are reaching their limit!

A lot of nurses, myself included, are finding the ever increasing demands of nursing to be physically/emotionally/psychologically/just overall intolerable to keep up with, especially in a system that treats us like worker bees/drones... that is the most common rationale I have heard from everyone I know who are advancing their nursing credentials: to distance themselves from deplorable conditions of bedside nursing.

Nursing 30 years ago vs. nursing today are starkly different worlds -- and something I am always struck to learn from more senior nurses is the common statement: "...if nursing today was nursing 20-30 years ago, I wouldn't enter the profession. It's becoming irrational". Increasing scope of practice aside, another major problem is skills are just being piled on top of other, non-nursing duties that, let's be frank here, none of us have the bloody time for... like fetching a newspaper, or re-arranging items in someone's room, laundry/ putting away clothes.. and all other duties that fall on our shoulder b/c SURPRISE SURPRISE the hospital is too cheap to hire CNAs/PSWs to help with those duties. Patient satisfaction scores are contributing nothing positive to the profession and we're promoted by hospitals to act more like perky hostesses than anything else. To most people, RN stands for refreshments and narcotics -- ever heard of that joke? Well, it's an expectation by most of the public when on the receiving end of our care.

If "just being a nurse" was as simple as that phrase implies no one would feel a need to chase after jobs that create a separation from bedside. So, until safe patient ratios and safer conditions (r/t violence against nurses) are mandated I am quite happy in my non-bedside nursing role and I have no intentions of going back to bedside nursing, certainly not full-time anyway.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Rehabilitation nurse.

i am an LPN , currently in the LPN-RN program & i completly agree! Everyone wants to be an NP! Nobody wants to be bed side! I'm 25 & i've been an LPN since i was 22. I love bedside . My mother, Who is also a nurse, swears that i'll get tired of bed side but i absolutely doubt it !

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I love being a nurse. My dream would be volunteering to do missionary work, to truly help those in need. Unfortunately, I can't do that because I have kids and need a paycheck. I'm hoping one day to at least go with a church group..

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Care Coordination, Care Management.

My Mom retired from bedside nursing, and I can assure you - she may not have had MSN, CNP or whatever after her name, but she absolutely was not "less than". In fact, anyone would be hard-pressed to find a nurse such as her.

I have zero interest in "furthering my education" as far as tacking on some new initials after my name. I have a job that I enjoy (though not bedside), and it wouldn't pay more with a higher degree.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Surgery.
Considering that the average American HOUSEHOLD income is ~ 53k, I'd say 60k is very "survivable."

The operative word here is "survivable." Just what is "surviving?" A $200,000+ house, a new car or two every couple of years, shopping at the most kitschy, designer supermarket around for a lot of high-dollar gourmet, "organic" food (Is there such a thing as "inorganic" food?), designer labels in the seams of clothing, purses, on cosmetics - that is NOT "surviving" in any sense of the word.

Surviving is living in the town with the highest unemployment rate in the country in the deep, dark depths of Reaganomics, getting "trickled down on" while standing in line outdoors in all kinds of weather for surplus commodities the government hoarded and then doled out with an eyedropper when it was feeling especially generous - cheese, giving it the name, " The Cheese Line" and cornmeal, butter, beans of various types, and whatever else happened to be sitting around.

It's spending 1/3 of your husband's net income of $178 a week on rent for an old house without air-conditioning or central heating - there was a space heater in the living room - and too old to even have closets.

Mortgages were not being written for anyone who couldn't put down 30% and pay 17% interest. No, that's not a typo - I said 17%. Federally subsidized apartment complexes had two year waiting lists.

It was when there were NO jobs, because even the jobs working at the grills and fryers at McDonalds were manned by laid off auto workers - same at Wendy's, Burger King, etc. It was where a woman with experience and good references, was hired to be a prep cook in a brand new restaurant, and was suddenly and completely without cause, FIRED because, as she was laughingly told by the manager, she has a husband who was working to support her, and they were hiring a MAN to replace her! And there wasn't a doggone thing she could do about it! Just like that! You're outta here!!

Companies who would take on the business of helping you work out a family budget for your household, and negotiate with your creditors, while distributing reduced payments for you, for a fee of course, were flourishing.

It was doing without a phone for four years because the local phone company refused to accept an out-of-state phone company as a reference in lieu of a big fat deposit, claiming that the largest phone company on the Eastern Seaboard at the time "wasn't reliable enough" to be used.

It's budgeting $40 per week to feed four people - 2 under the age of 3, (21 months apart) diaper the two of them (no, without your own washer and dryer, cloth diapers were NOT cheaper) and with every penny accounted for on a calculator before reaching the cash register. (No, coupons didn't help, since nobody put out coupons to be used on plain label generic food.)

Surviving was living with your husband and two children in a homeless shelter when you had no place else to go when a busted gas line in the street managed to fill YOUR house up with gas while you were out grocery shopping on a Friday afternoon with both your kids, and the "landlord" was a bank in Indianapolis, over an hour away, and unavailable on a Friday evening. It took a week to dig up the street, while all the windows in my house were open in February to air the place out; replace the line, restore service, then refuse to relight your furnace because the heat exchanger had a "crack" you could put your head in. Then, getting the landlord to approve the expense to be taken out of rent so you could get it fixed. On the neighbor's phone. Long distance. Collect!

It was standing in endless lines to prove you have the right to a few food stamps to help feed your kids, then endless more lines every month to prove you still do, then yet another line to collect those books of paper stamps to use while other people sniffed and looked down their noses while you sorted out the food from the non-food, the eligible from the ineligible, in the cart while you waited in the seemingly endless Friday night lines; then pay with stamps what you could and pay with cash what you couldn't. And there was NO junk in my cart. There was fruit, vegetables, meat, cereals (not junky presweetened crap) and plenty of milk and juice. No chips, no pop, no cookies, no ice cream except for birthdays. Home baked cake for birthdays, homemade cookies for treats, and my one concession to junk was Kool Aid in the summertime. If I decided a Pepsi might be nice, I gathered up a little change, put the kids in the stroller, and we walked to the gas station down by the corner and got one - two on a good day, saving one for tomorrow.

It was pulling the shades on the sunny side of the house in the boiling summer heat - the Midwest gets just as hot, if not hotter, than many other parts of the country, with 90°+ and 90%+ humidity - keeping open the windows and shades on the "cooler" side, setting the box fan on the coffee table, covering the sofa with a sheet because it felt cooler than the upholstery; stripping the kids to t-shirts and diapers, me to shorts and a tank top, and watching TV (no cable) in the afternoon, and them napping there in front of the fan. Me too, if it was tolerable.

Spending half a Saturday at the laundromat, washing and drying, sorting and folding all the week's laundry. If i could manage it, maybe saving back a buck and getting a hamburger and drink at a drive thru on the way, to sit and eat while I waited for the washers, a treat that I didn't have to cook or clean up after myself, beyond throwing the empty wrappers or cup in the trash!

THAT IS SURVIVING.

Above survival was getting close to the end of that horrible era, my husband getting a promotion AND a $2 an hour raise, a transfer to Indianapolis for which we had 10 days notice (!), which was paid for in terms of moving vehicles, but not in terms of the work - he and I did all that ourselves, alone. I had all the clothes put away, and the kitchen unpacked and put away, the boxes broke down and stored away before we went to bed that first night! We had found an apartment with central heat and A/C, and I swore that if I had to make payments on it, I was going to run that Air Conditioner 24/7 and be COMFORTABLE for a change. The whole bill, at the end of the first month, was HALF what the other company had been charging us without A/C! I saw that total, and burst into tears. I could actually go shopping for name brand groceries IF I wanted to! And pay cash for them, without any sorting, or getting sneered at by that group of people who couldn't get food stamps for themselves.

My kids didn't have to wear "Hand me downs" from cousins if I didn't want them to. But, we still had a gathering a couple of times a year to swap kid's clothes and stories.

We took several vacation trips over the years that were very memorable, both with and without the kids. They had a good time, because they got to stay with cousins, or even go with them on their trips! And it's important for couples to have their own times together.

Even at our best time, we saw $60,000 combined income for a few years. Before taxes, and after our kids were in high school! Being a CST doesn't pay too shabby either, especially if you are a Traveler.

Unfortunately I couldn't do that (Traveling) more than a few years. But we did enjoy it. We didn't get in over our heads either, when we bought cars, or our house. I think the common expression is "living within your means." We didn't buy more house than we needed, or at the high end of what we qualified for either. Never bought a new car, but well-cared-for used cars. We don't have a mailbox full of bills every month either. The house payment is less than what many pay in rent, and our cars are paid for. Other than the cost of daily life, we have no other "bills" to speak of. We pay cash, we drive older cars - our newest car is a 2000 Mercury Sable, with 196,000 miles in it. It's actually "my" car, since I bought and paid for it myself, but we just use whatever suits the purpose at the time, because that's how we've always done it. We have two others - a GMC truck for hauling stuff around, including ourselves because it is a very comfortable ride; and a compact car that my husband calls "The Commuter Scooter" because it gets great mileage and he drives about 40 miles one way to work five days a week. Oh - what does he do? He's a mechanic of course, and keeps all those vehicles in functional running order!

Since I've become disabled, we haven't had too many occasions for going out. I haven't been out my front door since I had surgery the week before Thanksgiving. Dreary? Perhaps. But I keep myself mentally occupied, which is enough to pass the time.

I think surviving is mostly a matter of perspective, more than anything. What is merely surviving for one may be living high on the hog to someone else who has had it a good bit worse. It just depends on your starting point.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Regardless of advance degrees and skipping bedside nursing, the fact is nursing is nursing and its all about for sick patients and knowing how the human works and what procedures are what and proper protocol and managing diseases.

If you want to be a CRNA, go for it. As long as I don't leave the hospital in a coffin.

I find it amazing how they count to 5 and im fast asleep. Propofol is powerful! The best sleeping medicine ever that is guaranteed!

Does a non bedside nurse know the procedure

On high creatinine and bun level from blood work? Or an A1C of 20??

My A1C is 18 and I feel fine! I still have my kidneys, toes and vision!

Just addicted to junk food!

With becoming an NP, my understanding is you have to have direct patient care first to be able to diagnose the patient and look over labs and know the best treatment plan. I certainly dont want to be taking estrogen for high blood pressure.

I personally see a cardiac nurse practitioner and I prefer her over the doctor because she has worked directly with patients and educates me very well and looks over my cholesterol and lab work and freaks out when my bp is over 160. The doctor is way to busy for all that.

Btw, a bp of 160/90 is not terrible. I've had BP of 250/180. The pharmacist was surprised I was standing and talking at that level and not having a Hemmoragic stroke l! I guess i'm Bionic!!

Even if its not bedside, but rather administration or management, the unit still has to be ran smoothly to make sure everyone is doing what their suppose to be doing and giving quality patient care.

When i've been in ICU in the better hospital, the Nurse Manager and Charge Nurse and CNM came into my room to introduce themselves and says if I need anything,let them know.now that's nursing management that cares!

An ER nurse in texas took the time to call me to make sure I was happy with the care I received from her.

Rule of thumb, when in El Paso, make sure the cooks wash their hands at the Taco Joints otherwise you may end up with Gastrointeritus

So whatever happened to going to school to becoming a Nurse?

Well with all those nursing books you've all studied, what else is it teaching? How to invest in a crashing stock market?

Of course theory and real world are quite different but I hope you wouldn't stand there when i'm vomiting blood and gasping for air and the nurse is like, ut oh, I didn't learn this is nursing school, what am I suppose to do? I'll just give a Tylenol to the patient!! Or better yet, get the nurse!! I forgot, you are a nurse!!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion