Why did you take up nursing? What's your story?

Every nurse has their own story to tell about how or why they chose to enter the nursing profession. Some may have been inspired by a personal experience with healthcare, while others may have been drawn to the idea of caring for others. Some may have stumbled upon nursing by chance, while others knew from a young age that it was their calling. Whatever the reason, each nurse has a unique narrative that led them to become a caregiver. These stories are a testament to the diversity and passion within the nursing community and the profound impact that healthcare can have on our lives.

Please be as detailed or as short as you wish. It'll be interesting to hear everyone's stories.

Growing up in Morocco, I always dreamt to be a Doctor and I worked hard but after high school I found out that to get into medical school I needed a connection or a lot of money to bribe some big corrupted administrator, so I went to a tourism school that landed me on an exchange program to the US.I worked very hard to start a new life here and finally I became a US citizen and had a good paying job, a more comfortable life and I decided that it was time to get back to school and do something in the medical field. at 38, I am in my first semester in Nursing school with English as my third language and a lot of determination, and you know what? I love it and I will survive it.It might take me a full 20 years to achieve my dream but better late than never.:clown:

Specializes in A myriad of specialties.
Growing up in Morocco, I always dreamt to be a Doctor and I worked hard but after high school I found out that to get into medical school I needed a connection or a lot of money to bribe some big corrupted administrator, so I went to a tourism school that landed me on an exchange program to the US.I worked very hard to start a new life here and finally I became a US citizen and had a good paying job, a more comfortable life and I decided that it was time to get back to school and do something in the medical field. at 38, I am in my first semester in Nursing school with English as my third language and a lot of determination, and you know what? I love it and I will survive it.It might take me a full 20 years to achieve my dream but better late than never.:clown:

What a positive attitude and so much determination! I wish you the best of luck in the pursuit of a nursing degree--it sounds as though you will definitely succeed!

I'm still a student (pre-nursing) but here's why I chose to take this path:

1) I was training to be a doula before I got put on bedrest with my second daughter. I attended a few births before her birth and a couple of births afterwards, too, for friends. It was fufilling. My mom was a nurse and I went to work with her a few times as a teen to shadow her. I saw a csection close up, was put to "babysit" patients until they started to feel like pushing, and saw several births. It was just really neat.

2) My daughter was born with special needs. She is going to be okay in the long run, but the first years have been and will be very challenging. She has been tube-fed from 3 mos old, had severe vomiting, GERD, feeding aversions, chronic croup, chronic ear infections (11 in her first year!), and so on. It's been a real education. I have had to be her nurse and learn to do many things I was not sure I was capable of before, because my insurance didn't provide any respite care for her. I can place NG tubes, I can change gtubes, I can vent, I can give meds on a schedule, I know when she's dehydrated and needs to be taken to ER, I can program a feeding pump in my sleep.

Today marks 2 months since she has needed her feeding tube for nutrition. She's still fed purees like a baby at 28 mos old but she's getting there. She's gaining weight, developmentally on track and doing fantastic. You would never know she's been through what she has.

3) The money would be nice. :) Right now I'm a SAHM and homeschool my older daughter. Living on a single income is not that fun but there's no way I can leave my youngest with anyone and expect them to put forth the effort I have to get her off the feeding tube.

4) The hours sound nice. I hope to work weekends so I can be at home with my kids during the day. Let's see what happens with that though.

I want to take what I have learned and the passion I have found for helping others in similar situations, and be a nurse. Not sure if I want to do L&D, Pediatrics, or something else entirely. It's going to take me five years at least to get through nursing school but I am going to do it.

I'm still a student (pre-nursing) but here's why I chose to take this path:

1) I was training to be a doula before I got put on bedrest with my second daughter. I attended a few births before her birth and a couple of births afterwards, too, for friends. It was fufilling. My mom was a nurse and I went to work with her a few times as a teen to shadow her. I saw a csection close up, was put to "babysit" patients until they started to feel like pushing, and saw several births. It was just really neat.

2) My daughter was born with special needs. She is going to be okay in the long run, but the first years have been and will be very challenging. She has been tube-fed from 3 mos old, had severe vomiting, GERD, feeding aversions, chronic croup, chronic ear infections (11 in her first year!), and so on. It's been a real education. I have had to be her nurse and learn to do many things I was not sure I was capable of before, because my insurance didn't provide any respite care for her. I can place NG tubes, I can change gtubes, I can vent, I can give meds on a schedule, I know when she's dehydrated and needs to be taken to ER, I can program a feeding pump in my sleep.

Today marks 2 months since she has needed her feeding tube for nutrition. She's still fed purees like a baby at 28 mos old but she's getting there. She's gaining weight, developmentally on track and doing fantastic. You would never know she's been through what she has.

3) The money would be nice. :) Right now I'm a SAHM and homeschool my older daughter. Living on a single income is not that fun but there's no way I can leave my youngest with anyone and expect them to put forth the effort I have to get her off the feeding tube.

4) The hours sound nice. I hope to work weekends so I can be at home with my kids during the day. Let's see what happens with that though.

I want to take what I have learned and the passion I have found for helping others in similar situations, and be a nurse. Not sure if I want to do L&D, Pediatrics, or something else entirely. It's going to take me five years at least to get through nursing school but I am going to do it.

Wow! You go girl. :yeah: :yeah: :yeah: :yeah: :yeah:

Specializes in GI/vascular.

Me a nurse? You must be joking. Everyone I knew suggested it and I resisted like crazy. I'd had 18 surgeries and the idea of spending more time in a hospital gave me cooties. So I planned on vet school, got an animal science degree and went to work at a vet's office. It was wonderful in it's own way, but it just didn't fit. So one day as I was scooping dog poo, a coworker was reading an article about the nursing shortage. I thought: I can make 5 times as much money to clean poop, and probably be bitten by patients less often. Sign me up! So I went back to school in an accelerated program and have been a nurse for almost 3 years. Everyone was right that this is the perfect career for me. I just needed time to figure it out for myself.

Quite frankly Ihave been pursuing this road for three years to get where I am now in my quest to become a nurse. I finally enter into the program this fall 2006, having received my acceptance letter on June 15-2006. I have a question, I would love to ask all the nurses as well as the nurses to be.

How much time have you spent in the bed of a patient, how many hours, days, weeks or years, collectively have you spent in having to be cared for by a nurse either in a hospital setting or in a home setting? How much do you think it would help to have had that experience? I personally spent 20 plus weeks a year in the hospital for many, many, years, have had countless surgeries, and 2 porta cathes over the last ten years, one I kept in my chest for 4 years and the second for 6. A great deal of the time I was on home health care having to hang alot of my meds, IV's, reload the pca pump, promethezine injections, dressing changes in a sterile field etc. All of this is why I am so passionate about being the best nurse I can possibly be. Out of all the 100's of nurses I've had, thank God the bad ones were few. How much do you think all the experience I've had being a patient will benefit me in the hospital setting on my journey to become a nurse? Would it had helped you more if you had at least some experience from the other end? Would love to read your responses, thanks in advance be blessed.

The story of my life... After graduating highschool i had made up my mind to take up HRM but both my parents discouraged it. They had their own paths for me to take, my dad wanted me to take up engineering and my mom wanted me to become a nurse. I'm horrible in Math and thinking that nursing was the lesser evil i took up nursing but to my dismay it still had math plus a whole lot of paper work. I didn't think i would survive it but here i am now, a fresh grad waiting for the local board exam results to come out. Funny thing is I actually like it now that I know what it is all about. :loveya:

wellll.... my mother is a nurse and she wanted me to follow take up nursing too... unfortunately, i was so ambitious at that time that i wanted to become a medical doctor instead because i like the sound of being called "DOC".. when i graduate from highschool, i took up BS BIOLOGY as a preparatory course for medicine and graduated @ 20... unfortunately, when its time for me to enter med school, my parents encouraged me to take up masters degree in biology instead of medicine... i got discouraged and instead enrolled in nursing without my parents knowledge (pretty bad huh!). also i realized that many medical doctors now are taking up nursing education... with God's help, after 3 years, i finished my course and was employed after passing the licensure examination.... now that i'm working as an ICU nurse in one of the hospitals here in our place, i find out that this is the kind of work that i like....

Such a good question to elaborate upon. While I grew up, I had chronic asthma problems. Always told I'd grow out of them and it never happened. i was admitted so much that the nurses made a joke and said, the next time you come, we want a batch of choc chip cookies. When the weather began to change on me, I started baking and putting in tupperwares...lol, with my mom's help of course.

I guess it was seeing how much they cared, I was sure they would see me and be like...Again? but never.

Also There's the chapel, and I would always go down there during my stays. I would hear people praying, sometimes crying.

And I felt like I could relate. Being from a single parent home, my mom couldnt always visit me as much as she liked.

Since I tend to be rather mushy, interconnected ( my mom says that, Im in denial about those words, lol)...I honestly feel there is no better way to touch the human soul, than to be present and bring support while the soul is suffering. It is when your concern, assistance, and presence are most valuable. (that's my reason for nursing)

I plan to use my nursing skills, on mission trips in my spare time. I just like serving and helping, encouraging and listening... and cant u tell? I like talking too lol.. smiles... take care all

Specializes in Intensive Care.

I became a nurse because my grade 12 biology teacher inspired me. She got me interested in health care and the complexity that is the human body. I love the profession and hope to do research as much as possible.

On bad days I still wonder why I became a nurse, LOL. Seriously though, I always had a soft spot in my heart for sick/ill people since I was very young.

Why do I want to become a nurse? Everyone always asks me and I get a little intimidated and insecure about myself when asked, but when I listen to everyone's story, everyone had something they had to overcome themselves in order to become a nurse so here's mine.

I'm not a nurse as of yet. Heck, I'm not even in nursing school. But I have enough faith and courage in me to believe that one day I will be one. Main motivation??? Give back what I've been given.

It's interesting that some people's story starts with being a bad kid, well, because I once was one. It has often set me back, thinking I can't do it anymore, and then the depression hits. Well, I wasn't always a "bad kid", it happened at adolescence. Before high school I was a straight-A girl and was put in advanced classes. But I was also very insecure and shy. I turned rebellious my freshman year and gave my parents a hell of alot of trouble. I ended up getting my GED my senior year, but I was one of those that loved academics so that did a number to my self-esteem.

I enrolled in the local community college and got a nurse's aide certificate. I was very proud of myself, even to have accomplished that. You see, my father was my coach, my guide throughout my life. All he wants for me is for me to have a bright, secure future. This was a step for me towards accomplishing that.

I liked being in college. There I could be myself with no pressure of fitting in and I wouldn't be put down for being smart. Trouble was I didn't know what I wanted to do...

In grade school there was a career fair and I chose nursing and teaching as my interests. A little while later I remember for a class assignment in health class we had to do a speech in front of the class. I don't remember any other time that I've been so confident in myself. My teacher praised my speech in front of the class and I got excellent marks. That spoke volumes to me that I was going to be good in one of those fields.

In high school, I was in honors chemistry my soph year and my teacher asked me what I wanted to be so he would know where to put me the following year. I said a nurse and without hesitation he wrote down the recommendation. That boosted my confidence up more.

Okay, so you're thinking I was 100% sure on becoming a nurse? No, I couldn't get myself out of my insecurity for too long. Besides I was doing better in other subjects other than science, like math (ironic isn't it) and social sciences. So in college I pursued other interests, such as psychology. I failed anatomy a couple times just because my heart wasn't totally into it. I've declared a liberal arts major a few semesters and just been in the journey of "finding myself".

I want to elaborate more and finish my story but I have just about 5 mins left on this computer.

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