~~10 CONCEPTS TO CONSIDER WHEN DECIDING IF THE NURSING PROFESSION IS FOR YOU~~
Written: Oct 16 '01
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Pros: The opportunity to make a difference in someone's life; decent pay; flexible schedules.
Cons: Short staffing; floating requirements; little respect; dealing with bodily functions.
The Bottom Line: It takes a special and dedicated person to choose to enter the nursing profession despite all of the many negative aspects often encountered on a daily basis.
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| melissasrn's Full Review: Nursing Profession |
As a Registered Nurse working in my primary field of Medical-Surgical Nursing for over 4 years now, I’ve learned many things along the way that many new graduates (including myself) have no clue about before deciding to enter the nursing profession as a chosen career. Had someone with my experience counseled me on what I was in store for after graduating second in my top notch nursing class, I most likely would have turn and ran "far, far away" like Jenni in "Forrest Gump" as fast as I could. While being a nurse does have it’s rewarding moments, they are unfortunately few and far between the majority of the time. Recommending choosing a career in the nursing field as I did always gives me mixed feelings as a result. Even though the pay is decent for many when compared to other career choices and schedules are somewhat flexible, nurses suffer from a high rate of on-the-job injuries and overall job dissatisfaction rather quickly (or “burn out” as many call it). So before considering entering the nursing profession, take a serious look at a few often overlooked situations that most nurses will encounter in their careers at one time or another.
1. Experience: If you think that you are going to land your dream job fresh out of nursing school with no experience whatsoever under your belt, you most likely suffer from delusional thought processes or are lucky enough to know someone with lots of authority and are in the right place at the right time. I entered nursing school all those years ago wanting to be a Labor and Delivery nurse, but now over 4 years after graduation I’m still working “the floor” for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here. There I was a fresh new RN straight out of school without one second of hospital nursing experience. So I basically took the first job I could get just to get my foot into the door. Most specialty areas (ER, ICU, OB, etc) want their nurses to have AT LEAST 1 year of general “Medical-Surgical” experience before they will even consider hiring a new nurse, although there are a few that prefer to train fresh nurses exactly the way they want them without any previous experiences standing in the way. Looking back now, I feel that having some CNA experience would have been very helpful to me as a brand new nurse. Not only did I have to learn my new RN role, but I also had to take a crash course in being a nurse’s aid as well. The stress of it all was rather overwhelming at first, but I eventually learned the ropes as most do. I “hit the floor running” and haven’t stopped since.
2. Nursing School Verses the “Real World”: Ideally, nurses would enter the work force prepared to practice nursing just as they were taught to do so while in school. Students learn the correct way to do things as part of a “perfect” nursing environment. Nurses start the shift rested and refreshed with a favorable attitude and are highly prepared with all the details they should know about the patients they are assigned to for the day. Medications are dispensed at the precise moment that they are due with no errors and all of each of our patient’s physical and psychological needs are met with efficiency on a moment’s notice in a leisurely manner with no interruptions or delays. And at the end of our shift, we leave our jobs with the satisfaction of knowing that we helped someone get better today. But sadly, in the “real world”, such events are rarely the case. Many times, the Medication Nurse may have 15 or more patients to pass meds to so there’s no time to spend chatting with each one about how he or she is doing. The Charge Nurse has that many patients or more to assess and whose care they are ultimately responsible for. Admissions and discharges are frequent, with all the mountains of paperwork that go along with each staring him or her in the face. Then suddenly, a patient goes “bad” and all other nursing duties are dropped to a low priority status. Nurses typically end the shift cranky, tired, and often discouraged at the poor to mediocre job they feel they’ve done that day. Instructors certainly can’t teach you how to be in 3 places at the same time while attending nursing school. That I would place my last dollar on.
3. Short Staffing: A common chronic problem that most nurses will complain about on a regular basis is being required to perform more and more duties with less and less staffing to do so. Most units are staffed for a certain patient load with no more and no less. It’s all about numbers with little concern for the acuity associated with each patient. If someone calls in sick, your nursing team for that day is already one member short. If the census is higher than normal, then there are more patients to take care of by the same number of nurses. So working “short” is just a fact of life that most nurses have to get used to from the very beginning. Of course patient care suffers as a result and the morale of the frustrated and overworked nursing staff reaches an all time low. When the census actually goes down periodically, you’d think that the nursing staff would get a much deserved break by having a smaller patient load, but this unfortunately this isn’t the case. To save precious money, periods of low census result in nurses being required to stay at home “on call” or to float to other areas of the hospital to get their time in. So while being “short staffed” is the norm, rarely will you find a unit working “over staffed” another day to make up for it. What a welcome break that would be every now and then!
4. Nurses Eat Their Young: It’s sad to say, but this statement is very true of many nurses currently employed today. Instead of taking new nurses under their wings and acting as a caring and knowledgeable mentor, established nurses seem to not remember what it was like being the new kid on the block. Ah, fresh meat! Nurses want to see what the “new crop” is made of. Some actually ENJOY seeing new nurses shake with fear or cry out of frustration as they try to become more confident in their newly acquired nursing skills. New nurses are lucky if they get a few weeks of orientation, tops. Then they are on their own to fend for themselves. It’s hard enough learning the ropes in the beginning without having nurses with many more years of experience giving you a hard time and looking down on you for being “slow”. After all, you have that nursing title behind your name, right? You should already know all there is to know about nursing from school just like they do. Oh sure! To me, one of the most respected nurses you will find is one that patiently and without judgment teaches a new nurse how to function properly and independently with confidence. They are there, but are a rare find indeed.
5. It’s a Dirty Job…: (but someone has to do it) I’m going to be an RN. I won’t be emptying bedpans or wiping dirty bottoms when I go to work. That’s what nurse’s aids are for, right? WRONG! In that “perfect world” we were talking about earlier, lower paid and lower skilled nurse’s aids would do all of this “dirty work” while the more highly educated, higher paid RN with all of her nursing skills would attend to other “more important” duties. But this line of thinking just does not wash in the nursing profession today. Let’s face it. There will be times when the licensed nurse is the only person available on the floor to attend to the personal care of a patient in need. What are you doing to do? Make them wait minutes or longer until someone else is available? I certainly hope not! You may actually be surprised at just how much better you will know your patients when such contact is required. In the “real world”, nurses do it all. They are the patient’s advocate, the caregiver, the waitress, and the psychiatrist. So be prepared to get “down and dirty” with your patients just as if you were a glorified CNA, for there are times when that’s exactly what you’ll be.
6. Where’s the Glory and Appreciation?: After all the long and hard hours you put in at your job with the numerous skipped lunches and few restroom breaks, you’d think that eventually you’ll be appreciated by your supervisor and the hospital administrators, right? Perhaps you will. But don’t be surprised, shocked, or disappointed if this does not happen. Nurses work long shifts (8 to 12 hours is the norm with 16 hour “double shifts” certainly not unheard of), nights, weekends, and holidays while their family is at home without them, often without extra pay or any expressed gratitude from employers for doing so. And even though there are many wonderful and caring physicians out there, you’ll find just as many who will eat you for breakfast if you don’t treat them like God or an error occurs, even if it’s not your fault or is something that is out of your control. Can’t read the doctor’s perfect penmanship? No problem! Just call him up (most female physicians I’ve come in contact with don’t apply here) and simply ask for an order clarification. “You disturbed my valuable time for what? Any idiot could read that order. What’s the matter with you? Stupid nurse….” Oh yeah. I feel appreciated every day.
7. Bedside Manner: Most people know that having a great bedside manner is a pretty important requirement for being a great doctor. But I can assure you that it’s just as important, if not more so, for nurses to have a positive, unbiased, and caring attitude if good patient care is going to be provided. And not only must this be used with your patients, but with the families as well. There will be many times when you’ll have the nicest patient in the world, but the FAMILY is one that you’d like to see banished from the building forever! Unfortunately, you can’t do that, so you must learn how to tactfully relate both professionally and favorably with those people who technically are not even in your care. Even though many times it is certainly not intentional, nurses are often the “scapegoats” for a patient’s overall dissatisfaction of any aspect of their care that they have or have not received. If the patient and/or family are upset with the doctor for whatever reason (they are late, haven’t explained things thoroughly, etc), the nursing staff are the ones more often than not that receive the brunt of any anger and impatience while they try as best as they can to smooth things over. Sometimes we succeed, but sometimes we do not.
8. Floating: Something I mentioned briefly above was that most nurses are required to float to other areas of the hospital during times of low census or when extra staff is needed in one of these places. While some nurses don’t mind to float and will sometimes even volunteer as long as they get their hours in, there are others that would rather stay in their “comfort zone” and have the option to refuse. But with nursing shortages apparent across the country, more health care facilities are now requiring that ALL of their nurses float when requested or face disciplinary action. This would not be such a big deal if nurses were properly oriented to the unfamiliar units they must float to, but many times this happens with little to no training provided, especially when general staff nurses working on “the floor” are required to go to specialty areas like ER or ICU. It is very stressful, not to mention downright dangerous, to be pulled from the unit you are normally assigned to work on and then required to float somewhere else without the proper training given first. Some nurses are so adamantly against floating that they are willing to lose their job if they are forced to do so. Patients are put at risk, as well as the nurse’s own license, which makes having your own malpractice insurance policy more important now than ever. Don’t count on your employer to take care of you if something happens. Be prepared with your own coverage in an attempt to protect your livelihood. For sometimes, all that is needed is a “warm body” to fill in, regardless of any potential consequences.
9. Men in the Nursing Profession: Even though it’s unfortunate, many people in the general population have preconceived ideas of what type of men are interested in entering the nursing field. Still overwhelmingly a woman’s career, more and more men and choosing to enter the nursing profession for a variety of reasons. Many people will often question a male nurses sexual orientation right off the bat as a consequence, however. “What kind of man wants to be a NURSE? How silly. He must be gay.” This stereotype remains despite the fact that MANY heterosexual males have received the training to be caring and skillful nurses right along side the women. While they typically get less respect in general, both from other nurses, doctors, and the lay public, some of the best knowledgeable and professional nurses I know just happen to be men. But on the flipside, more and more of the top managerial nursing positions are being occupied by men. So if being a nurse manager sounds like a good career choice, then becoming a male nurse seems to be one of the many ways to achieve this goal (along with earning a BSN, of course).
10. The Bottom Line: Health care is becoming more expensive every day, with no relief in site. Fraud is quite common, insurance companies don’t want to pay for services provided, and doctors aren’t allowed to practice as they should without the many rules and regulations that are now put into place regarding patient care. Budget cuts are made all the time, so more and more services are expected to be provided with less money paid out overall. One of the first places expenses are often cut is with the nursing department. This is where the short staffing and other monetary issues often come in to play. But nurses are the ones that actually care for patients 24 hours a day. To expect them to do so on less and less compensation when compared to increased responsibilities and workload as a result is an injustice in itself. Of course it’s naďve to think that health care providers will thrive if they are broke, but overworking and then eventually losing good nurses to other areas of employment does not seem to be a very profitable decision either. But I certainly don’t have the answers. Maybe if I did, I’d be more than “just” a staff nurse.
So while considering if the nursing profession is for you, stop for a moment and take a good, hard look at many of the harsh realities that often go along with it. While there is no better feeling in the world than truly knowing that you helped someone or possibly saved a life, nursing has a long way to go in receiving the professional and respected status that is so deserves. There is no replacement for a job well done, but the nursing profession as it stands today makes it very difficult for even the most driven and ambitious nurses to do so. Small wonder that there are many non-practicing nurses contained in the world today. But we certainly need both intelligent and caring individuals to care for the sick when they require it most. Once the medical community and the general population in general realizes that nursing involves much more than just emptying bedpans, perhaps this career choice will get a better rap.
NOTE: I truly did not intend to sound bitter when writing this editorial. Realistic is probably the better word. So because listing many of the cons associated with the nursing profession seems to be much easier for me than listing the pros, I wrote about them first. But “part two” listing all the pros will be coming soon.
Recommended:
Yes
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