Why I Chose Nursing..

alex1987 · Jul 4, 2012

After graduating High School I worked as a CNA for a year and loved the job!

I'm from Venezuela, and in my country nurses are not respected, they are not considered professionals because they don't go to college (they just train them in the hospitals for like a year), and they are not taught to think critically.

Because of that and because I wanted to have a degree from college I became a pre-med student. A year later my parents moved here to the US and I just followed them and since nursing is a career here and are considered professionals I decided to follow "my dream" and be a nurse.

I'm now in my 2nd semester of nursing school and just so happy to be here finally doing what I wanted to do from the beginning :nurse:

ddunnrn · Jul 4, 2012

I did really well in high school, and my plan was to go to college, and then on to medical school, eventually to be a GP. I went to a college known for cranking out successful pre-med students, but rather than select the "easy" major for pre-meds, I was a chemistry major. Much harder, but more interesting, and also a fallback if I didn't get into med school. My college usually had like a 95% acceptance rate for med school, but my year it dropped to about 80%, and I didn't get in. A little background--this was back in the mid-''70's, when med schools were good old boy networks and bastions of white heterosexual elitism. I was definitely not a good old boy type, and didn't do well in my admission interviews. I also was having family medical problems and I guess my anxieties were showing through. Best thing for me, in the long run. I then went to grad school for pharmaceutical chemistry, did ok but realized that applied science was too boring, and didn't have enough people to people contact. Also, most of chemical theory is already worked out, so all new "discoveries" are basically refinements of what is already known. Not challenging enough for me. I piddled around after leaving grad school (never got the master's degree), and sorta tried to avoid thinking about nursing. My mother was an RN, several other family members were also in nursing. Somehow, I thought selecting nursing would be settling for less. The most influential reason for avoiding nursing was that I didn't want people to stereotype me as gay (which i was), because back then that was very common. I got a job at a nursing home and did very well there, applied to a diploma school, and got accepted to their part-time program. For the first year, I only had 1 course, because I challenged all the sciences, except microbiology, which i'd never had. All the other students were wondering who the new guy was who popped in mid-year, and did really well in class. The next year, I was with the regular class. I had to bite my tongue when some of the scientific principles were not presented exactly right, but overall the program was so supportive, I couldn't complain. In short, I breezed through school, and graduated 2nd in my class (darned that witch, Judy :) ) For some reason, I always seem to be on the cusp of a new era, and when I graduated in 1984, the hire rate for new grads plummeted because of the insurance reimbursement plan called DRG's. Hardly anyone got hired, when usually the school's home hospital would take up the slack of unhired grads. One day, I tagged along with a fellow grad who was going to the local state mental hospital where we had had a clinical rotation, for her employment physical. I was sitting in the waiting area, and the DON popped his head out, and offered me a job, too. So I started in psych 27 years ago, and haven't had experience in any other specialty. I am so glad I didn't make into medical school, because I have worked with enough physicians to know that's not for me. The best thing about nursing, and psych in particular, is that you can use all your life's experiences therapeutically, and your most powerful tool is just being a good behavioral example. Well, that's the looooong story. Sorry for any crazy typos or autocorrects on this goofy iPad!!

taytay05 · Jul 4, 2012

That's an interesting story. What is it you learned about doctors that didn't appeal to you? I was also interested in psych, but have heard mixed reviews.