? Why are people saying that nursing is tough? i dont understand whats so hard about

blueheaven · Sep 21, 2008

What does EMT stand for? And how do i go on about taking classes for this. And what part time job can i do as a EMT while i am in highschool/college?

And thanks for all the replies guys.

P.s. Dam.. i really dont think i can get like a 90 and above in all of my pre requist classes on my first year of college... Grrr. i really want to help people and make a good living. but this is bs. that its so hard to get into a nursing program. I really dont know what to be now/study in college. Are their any other similar careers that make a decent living that arent so hard to get into?

And i serously want to help.. Im not one of those people that just want the money.. I volunteered at my animal shelter over the summer last year . I am a caring person... And i will do the work.. As long as its explained to me correctly.

And ok sure the nurses deal with peoples lives.. But if you studyed and know about the pills that you give them/iv's and all that. Then you should be fine when you are well educated..

Also nursing is a lifetime class...you are learning something new all the time. New drugs, new medications, new treatments. Going to nursing school isn't the end of our education...it continues as long as I choose to work as a nurse.

Otessa, BSN, RN · Sep 21, 2008

To the original poster:

Unless you have walked in the(nurses) shoes you are clueless.

Otessa

Vito Andolini · Sep 21, 2008

..... i tried doing research but i am not really finding anything. i just get a brief paragraph of what rn's do. the best thing of my research taht i did was finding this site..... so can you guys plz help me so i dont make a big mistake.
what do you yall do daily as an rn.

it's great that you are thinking about your choice of careers and preparing to make some first steps to figure out which direction to go. senior year is a great time for that. :yeah: :nurse:

i want to suggest that you spend time with rn's on the job to see what they are actually doing. i think you should contact the director of nursing at a couple of hospitals, a couple of nursing homes (also called skilled nursing facilities (snf) or long term care (ltc) facilities), and several other places where rn's work. are there some outpatient surgery facilities in your area? what about spending time with your school nurse to start? also, call or go to a couple of big companies in your town and talk with/spend time with their occupational health nurse.

i want you to contact your local state, county, or city health departments and spend time with their public health nurses (might be called community health nurses).

shadow a nurse in your local city, county, parish, federal, or state jail or prison. visit with a nurse at a va hospital. that stands for veterans' administration and it is a hospital and clinic that cares for our military veterans and their dependents. you would be employed by the federal government if you worked for the va. fed gov also employs nurses in public health, the military, bureau of prisons (bop), and probably other agencies. google fed gov jobs to learn where nurses work for the fed.

go to the specialty tab here on allnurses home page. if you click on that, you will see that there are many specialties in which rn's work. there you will find nurses who work in mental health (psychiatry), pediatrics (newborns, infants, children, and adolescents), maternal-child (labor and delivery, neonatal intensive care (nicu), post-partum (taking care of women who have given birth and caring for their healthy newborns), and there are nurses working in many different areas of medical and surgical nursing (we call it med-surg or m/s or something like that, depending on where you live. medicine means non-surgical and encompasses things like cardiac patients, respiratory patients, gastroenterology (stomach and colon and related organs), burns, dialysis (kidney failure patients), metabolism (things like diabetes and other diseases that come from problems with body systems and organs that regulate our metabolism, such as the thyroid gland and pancreas), neurology (brain and nerves; have you heard of alzheimer's disease or lou gehrig's disease or multiple sclerosis?). there is also hematology and it treats anemia, leukemia, and other problems of the blood and blood-forming organs. there is oncology, which treats cancer patients. don't forget dermatology and being a summer camp nurse or a nurse on a cruise ship. you can become an advanced practice nurse (apn) and learn to diagnose illness, prescribe treatment for it, or a crna (certified registered nurse anesthetist) and be able to put people to sleep for surgery, care for them during this absolutely critical time, and most importantly of all, wake them back up, without having harmed them.

there is surgical nursing and this includes things like working with surgeons in the operating room (or), recovery room (taking care of patients who have just had an operation for the first hour or so after the operation to make sure their vital signs (vs) come back to normal. vs = blood pressure , pulse, respirations, oxygen level in their blood, their temperature, and their degree of pain. that's bp or b/p, tpr, o2 saturation, and pain level. also, their loc, level of consciousness. are they awake and do they know where they are, that is.

surgical nursing covers things like eye surgery, ear, nose, and throat (ent)surgery, orthopedics (broken bones from sports, accidents, crime, falls, etc., joint replacements for people who have deformities, arthritis, etc., helping children with birth defects, such as we see in kids with spina bifida or muscular dystroply. spina bifida is a defect in the spinal cord or its coverings and results in many problems.) people have surgery on their internal organs (stomach, spleen, liver, bowel - this is called general surgery) or on their bladder and kidneys (urology), on their hearts and lungs, and many other parts. there is cosmetic surgery to beautify us or to help burn patients, there is hand surgery, foot surgery, brain surgery,and so on.

of course, there is the emergency room and also women's health (gynecology). nurses work in hospice, which is taking care of patients in their last few months of life. nurses work in home health, visiting patients in their own homes, caring for their wounds, illnesses, spotting new problems and getting the patients the proper care for these.

i suggest that, in addition to contacting your own school nurse and the places i mentioned above, you research your state's board of nursing. click on the resources tab above to find out how to reach them. they should be delighted to help you get all the information about professional nursing that you need. also contact the ana (american nurses association) or other trade associations you find out about.

nursing requires that you be serious about ethics, about reporting for duty even if it's thanksgiving or christmas or your own birthday, about putting your patients first. you will possibly have to work weekends, holidays, nights, evenings, and other inconvenient times. you might be forced to work overtime when you don't want to. you will be dealing with human lives and you can't just go home at the end of your shift if there is an emergency. these days, "emergency" is loosely defined and seems to include routine staff shortages, not just shortages you might expect due to hurricanes, ice storms, blizzards, and floods, which are true emergencies.

it requires that you study anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, biology, microbiology, and learn about diseases and how to treat patients who have them. you will study psychology, sociology, leadership, nutrition, and math (for calculating medication dosages), and medications, their uses and side effects.

you will grow personally in your ability to interact successfully with various people - doctors, patients and their families, and other hospital personnel, such as nurses' aides, radiology technicians, respiratory therapy techs, pharmacists and their assistants, dietary (kitchen) personnel and dieticians (rd's = registered dieticians), laundry, maintenance, housekeeping, security, information technology personnel, and other departments, too. you will be around medical students, social work students, administrators of your facility and your department, and so on.

you could eventually become a nurse manager and be in charge of a particular area. you would make the work schedule, hire and fire your staff, deal with lots of personnel matters, and go to many meetings with the other managers and those to whom managers report. you could become a nurse educator and work in a school of nursing, teaching nursing students, you could be a researcher, write textbooks or articles for nursing journals, you could work as an mds coordinator, admissions coordinator, or even become a don (could be known as chief nurse executive). you could get a degree in business administration with a specialty in health care administration and run a whole facility.

if you do direct care (bedside nursing), you will be giving lots of meds, cleaning lots of poo, pee, blood, vomit, pus, cleaning mouts, rear ends, and changing lots of dressings (bandages), with lots of icky drainage on them. you will check blood sugar levels, give insulin, give iv's of antibiotics and other meds, draw blood, give lots of shots.

we all start at the bedside, some of us stay there. yes, there are aides to help but you still have to do a lot of it. you will be taking vs, reporting bad ones to doctors, getting new orders from doctors, transcribing and carrying out said orders, transmitting them to pharmacy so pharmacy will get you the meds you need. you will chart (record in the patient's chart) what you did, how the patient reacted, etc. you will interact with social workers to arrange placement of the patient upon discharge from the hospital.

you will learn that nursing occurs within a society and is, therefore, affected by that society's politics, economics, and various religious and cultural factors. is there a particular culture you are interested in? perhaps your own background suggests a culture/religion you want to serve as a nurse. you could become a missionary nurse or go to saudi arabia or other country as a nurse. the opportunites are truly vast. some nurses work as travel nurses and work at various places for perhaps 3 months then move on. if they really like it, they can sign up to work again at that facility. you could work at a ski resort, work in alaska, work in hawaii, work where you want to see friends, family, or meet new people. check out doctors without borders for some interesting information.

if you like interacting with lots of different people, nursing is a good choice. as opposed to preferring to work more with animals, things, or numbers. you will be around people of all sizes, shapes, colors, beliefs, habits, economic/social status, and so on. you must be kind and tolerant, not judgmental, even if you don't agree with everything you hear and see - and you won't. some nurses work in abortion clinics. some work in std clinics, some work in group homes for mentally ill people or abused kids/adolescents. you don't have to like everyone or agree with everyone, you just need to be courteous and skilled. jail nurses work with murderers and baby rapers. just be professional.

i wish you lots of luck and hope this helps you. you have a big assignment and i hope you'll take the first steps of talking to nurses you know and going on the specialty and resource tabs here. please keep us updated and do keep asking questions. enjoy your senior year, too! :up: :loveya:

another thought: talk to your own doctors, including surgeons, to see if they can help you get into various facilities. due to privacy laws, it might be difficult to get in without someone opening a door for you. you could ask doctors you know if you could make rounds with them for an hour or two. that means you would accompany them when they see their patients in the hospital or nursing home. they could introduce you to the don and staff rn's. dress very neatly, as you would for a job interview, wear comfortable walking shoes, do not carry a purse, wear a long, white lab coat. you can buy or borrow one. you will look totally professional. carry a small notepad to take some notes. be sure to be fairly sedate, friendly, and quiet.

mpccrn, BSN, RN · Sep 21, 2008

i suggest you apply to an internship before you decide on a career in nursing. you obviously have no clue what we do. like any career, there are good and badf parts. only you can decide if the bad parts are worth the good parts. we are at the bedside, we identify problems that may be developing that the doctor needs to investigate, we decide what he needs to be aware of and what can wait. we ultimately decide what meds ordered can or should be actually be given. yes, the lives of those we care for are in our hands, more so than the doctor. he makes rounds for 10 minutes if the patient is lucky and moves on. we are their last defense against death. we are there when they do die, what we do first can bring them back to life sometimes. we hold their hands, comfort them, educate them, bath them, fix their boo boos, clean their butts, coordinate their care and do whatever every other department in the hospital refuses to do. we inflict pain sometimes to make them better. we put them first before all else......even ourselves. we see to their needs before we go to the bathroom, before we take the time to eat or check on our own families. we give up our kids soccer games, christmas morning and presentations they might be giving because we have to work. when weather conditions are too terrible for the average person to go to work......we are expected to come in. when we are ill ourselves, we have to make the choice to come in, those we are expected to care for are more ill. we don't expect breaks, lunch or to get out on time......still want to be a nurse?? for me, the answer is YES! :smokin:

vashtee, RN · Sep 21, 2008

and i didnt think rn's can be responsible for peoples lives. i thought they just treat little injuries. like broken fingers/burns/take ur pulse and such..

Guess again, sweety. The doctors spend a few minutes with the critically ill patients every day (maybe), and the nurses are the ones who are aorund when things go bad.

jackson145 · Sep 21, 2008

I've got nurses, a doctor, a lawyer, teachers, an architect, a writer, police officers, a firefighter, a Wal-mart cashier, a McDonald's cook, an accountant, & a business office manager in my family. They each complain that they have the most stressful job ever.

Nursing is not the only career, by a long shot, that holds people's lives in their hands.

From extensive conversations I've had with family and friends, it would appear that the work environment, the work load, the powers that be, & whether or not you enjoy what you've been hired to do, have the most effect on a workers level of stress.

neatnurse30 · Sep 21, 2008

What is so tough about being a nurse?
i am thinking about being a registered nurse and it seems like a great career. but alot of people complain that its hard and such.. whats hard bout it?

Another naive one who doesn't know what she's gonna go through...

RS0302 · Sep 21, 2008

And ok sure the nurses deal with peoples lives.. But if you studyed and know about the pills that you give them/iv's and all that. Then you should be fine when you are well educated..

Thats not all there is to dealing with people's lives. We have to be able to assess patients and take necessary steps when we feel a patient is deteriorating. The doctors are not there unless we call them. No offense, but are you getting your ideas of what nursing is like from shows like Grey's Anatomy?

Pmkn10RN · Sep 21, 2008

I really dont know what to be now/study in college. Are their any other similar careers that make a decent living that arent so hard to get into?

The fact that getting into nursing school or any other program for that matter is hard, should not have a bearing on whether or not you decide that's something you want to do. If being a nurse is truly what you want... then you will not care that it's hard to get into the program. You will do whatever it takes to be accepted!

InMySoul · Sep 21, 2008

i c.. also is it hard to get accepted into a nursing program--unviersity /community college? like im a senior in highschool and my gpa was about a 85 unweighted for my freshmen and junior year. but my sophmore year i messed up bad and my gpa was like a 60. i was going through a real hard time.(i had a 83ish the first 2 quarters but then the last 2 quarters i started skipin skool and such..)
and i didnt think rn's can be responsible for peoples lives. i thought they just treat little injuries. like broken fingers/burns/take ur pulse and such..

hum, well that almost sounds like nurses only treat the small stuff.

i'm just taking my pre-reqs right now, but the thought of my duties of being a nurse is pretty intense.

just imagine, (if you will) that one mistake could cost someone their life. it's a lot more than just dealing with a cut or broken finger. it's knowing and retaining all that you're learning in school so you know exactly what you're doing.

kudos to all the nurses~! :yeah:

beachbum3 · Sep 21, 2008

Nursing programs can be difficult to get into, it depends on the program. I suggest finding one that accepts students using a point system. I did that and got in right away. My gpa wasn't incredible, but was with in the requirements, but with the points system I had enough points to get me in. You got a certain number of points based on classes you had already taken (ie, if you get some of your pre reqs done- such as anatomy and physiology, english, psychology, etc), courses you took in high school, if applicable (I took chemistry, biology and algebra in high school) and most of all how well you scored on the ASSET test which is basically a test given at the community college to see where you are at academically and what level of gen ed classes (usually english and math) you can start at. I did really well on the ASSET, which maxed my points and I got right in the program. So, don't be intimidated by the difficulty of getting into nursing school- its definitley doable. I don't think any of the points were based on GPA.

As far as a nurse's daily life on the job, shadowing is a great idea. I don't think becoming a CNA or taking an EMT course will give you a good picture of what a nurse does because they are just different. I couldn't be an EMT, ever, because coming up on a scene in the field just freaks me out because you have NO idea what kind of condition people will be in. At work, though, I don't have any issues like that, as at the bare minimum you have a vague idea of what might be happening with them when they get to the ER (though I'm not an ER nurse, I did my capstone in school in the ER where I had a clinical experience there for 3 shifts) and I was ok with that. Nurses do so much more than pass pills, hang ivs, and follow drs orders. We do a complete head to toe assessment (the same as the doctor does, and sometimes more thorough) and must be able to recognize issues as they are happening- neuro, respiratory, cardiac, GI, GU, skin, etc- so we can report them to the doctor. We develop our own plan of care, separate from the doctors. We do as much diagnosing as the doctors- just not officially. (well, not me yet, I'm still learning!) Watch an experienced nurse- many times through out the day he/she will say "I think pt x has y" and will alert the dr and sure enough thats what the pt has. How about when a dr is writing orders- all the time the nurses will say "also, dr, what about x,y,z for this pt?" and he/she will say "ok, do that" (or "oh yeah, that too", as I've heard them say)

As far as the tasks in the day heres what my day (well, night) looks like, and this is just a frame, because things change all the time, and prioritizing makes some of these things happen out of order, and above all this is just the bare minimum with out any of the other stuff that comes up to be done during the shift:

5pm: get to work, get pt assignment, take report from nurses getting ready to go home. Also pull 5pm strips (off ekg monitors) to mount in chart

530-545p: after report look in charts to see if there are any other orders I need to know about before I begin rounds. I try to bring any supplies I might need with me- and IV bags that might be running low, new tubing, wound care supplies, new meds that need to be given, consents for next day procedures that need to be signed etc. So I like to look in charts ahead of time so I know who is getting what.

6p- pull meds for the night.

615p- start rounds, doing assessments, treatments, passing medications, hanging IVs etc

8-830p- take a break to eat, if no discharges or admits.

845p-chart

945- pull 10 pm strips, do 10p rounds, pass 10pm meds

1045p- chart

1130pm- start checking to see if there are midnight meds due. if so, begin passing.

1230a- charting, careplans, chart checks

0200a- 2am rounds, pull strips

415a finish up any tasks in the computer left, (ie completing tasks in task manager etc) and begin getting ready to give report to oncoming shift

5am begin giving report

530-545- when report is done and all charting complete, go home

In between all of that you are calling/seeing drs, checking labs, xrays (or other imaging), procedure reports, looking to see what is upcoming to report to the next shift, responding to pt needs and plenty more other things to be attended to that come up as the night goes on. Also in between all of that you can expect an admit/transfer or 2, and sometimes a discharge.

Nursing is a tough job, but I love it. :) Do your research, and try to shadow a nurse and see what its like. If you want to do it, you definitely can! I got through nursing school with 3 kids and a mortgage, as did many others, if we can do it, you can too. Just takes hard work, and dedication!

Tweety, BSN, RN · Sep 21, 2008

To the original poster:
Unless you have walked in the(nurses) shoes you are clueless.
Otessa

Which is why he is taking the time out to ask us. :)