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.

Specializes in oncology.

Interesting thread, everyone's stories are fascinating.

true story

I was originally and still am a licensed massage therapist. Many men at least 50% of male clients in florida massage studios ask lude and lascivious favors from female therapists, it is very degrading and humiliating. In a very vivid nightmare I had some dirty old man client chasing me, I ran into a hospital and the nightmare turned into a divine dream. I clearly felt the light of God fall all over me and into me and I had a beautiful peace, and in that moment I knew He wanted me to be a nurse.

I woke up and immediately called a nursing school in my area that I knew would include a Christian component to the nursing program and I applied, through His help I kept two jobs and went to school full time simultaneously, graduated without problem and love nursing more than I would have ever realized on my own.

God Bless all nurses, it is a divine calling that dates all the way back to Florence Nightengale's calling:caduceus:

well now, for me, nursing as a career started out as my grandfather's dream. well, he wanted my mother to become a nurse and when she didn't, it fell to me. i began nursing school while a senior in high school. i graduated high school at age 17, nursing school at 18 and was a charge nurse before my 19th birthday. boy was that a mistake that was. got totally burned out before i turned 21. couldn't make myself even drive by a hospital or nursing home for years. two years ago i started working in the kitchen of the local hospital, mainly to prove to myself that i could actually walk through the doors day after day. actually got a look of satisfaction from one of my nursing instructors who is now a hospital volunteer. back when i was in school she said i should quit and become a secretary or something. well basically, that did it. worked my hind quarters off and renewed my lpn and luckily enough people with whom i'd worked before still worked at the hospital but were now in positions of directors and supervisors. our don was willing to give me a shot. now even on the craziest, most hectic days when nothing is going right, i can't see myself doing anything else. i love my job and although this may sound boastful, i'm good at what i do. i guess it took those years away from it to realize just how much i'd missed it all. it also took that time to develop the confidence and assertiveness it takes to deal with doctors, other departments, and families. i've learned tact and diplomacy and now i actually have family members and patients seek me out on a daily basis. had two ladies tell me that i was no longer allowed to have days off lol. i've learned to tolerate other nurses who get upset because i have a good rapport with doctors and families. i simply am who i am and do not appologize for it. not every day is perfect, and not every patient's story has a happy ending but i like the fact that i've made a positive difference in so many lives and on so many levels. wouldn't trade that for anything in the world.

I think I always just knew that this was my path...

Meeting new people, helping others, being active-I'm so glad I chose it.

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

+ Join the Discussion