10 Reasons Why Being a Nurse is Awesome!

This is the whole reason I wanted to become a nurse, I wanted to help people. I don’t get thanked on a daily basis, and I don’t always know if I have really helped people individually. I do go home every day and know that I made a difference, it might be small, but it’s a difference.

Pay is usually very good, always above the minimum wage, which was my goal when I first started school. Now I have a little bit of a higher standard. Pay changes though depending on the field you work in. Usually places that you have to work weekends, holidays, and coverage is needed 24 hours a day (like a hospital) is going to pay the best.

You will always know your field and your job very well. In the jobs I have worked, I have always had to critically think. This may just be as simple as knowing that a patient’s diet is thickened liquids and making sure their medications accommodate that, all the way to present an accurate clinical picture to a physician on the phone for medication orders. I have always needed to be thinking of what’s coming next.

Like I said earlier, you will know your field and job best. You, however, will always be learning about your chosen field. Just by the nature of the field of science, medicine is always changing. We are always studying the efficacy of medications, and treatment options. This means that what is the best method to do a certain thing is always changing. You may also think that when you get comfortable in your field that you have “seen it all” this never happens. You will always have something new come through the door.

There is a reason why in nursing no one is allowed to say the “Q” word (quiet). It is because the moment you think that you are going to have a slow day/night you are immediately proven wrong. Someone has an emergent need of some kind or something happens that will take up most of your time for that shift. Even if you do happen to have the miracle of downtime, there are always things you can do during downtime, whether it be making sure you have everything stocked, cleaning equipment, or other small tasks.

Specialties is another reason, why I wanted to become a nurse. If you feel particularly passionate about pediatrics you can go into that field. It is almost like you have 100’s of jobs within a job. If you do go into a specialty, you will know more about that specialty than anything else in nursing. Unlike when you come out of nursing school and know a little bit about everything, you will shortly become very knowledgeable about your chosen specialty and forget a little about other’s you don’t deal with on a daily basis.

This is another reason I became a nurse, depending on the kind of nurse you become, you have many options for schooling. I went to a post-secondary school that only took a year for me to become a licensed practical nurse. Read more about that HERE!

If you are in the Susquehanna Valley this is their website http://lpn.csiu.org/. If you would like to go to even shorter schooling you can become a certified nursing assistant which usually takes about a month. To get a degree you can do that as an LPN/LVN with an associates degree. You can also become a registered nurse with an associates degree. You can also get a bachelors or masters as an RN, but if you go beyond a bachelors degree you will have to pick a specialty.

I have not had a job yet, that I haven’t had the possibility to become or be hired as a full-time employee with benefits. You usually have a new hire period, where you have to wait for them to kick in. Or most of the jobs I have had, I was hired as needed and then moved into a full-time position. The benefits always include health insurance, short term/long term disability, retirement funds, vacation, and sick pay.

After you pass your state boards, you will start to have people contact you for jobs. As long as you put your resume out there, you will have people interested in hiring you. This goes, hand and hand with number 10. The longest I have been out of work while licensed has been 2 weeks. Unless I have been trying to go back to school or some other reason I have taken time off. That is of course with applying to multiple jobs every day.

There is an incredible need for nurses, especially in long-term care as the “baby boomers” are in the age of needing care. You will find in many areas of nursing they are in dire need of more staffing. This is good for you because you will always be in need. You will never have to be afraid of being outsourced or replaced by technology.

So these are my reasons for why being a nurse is awesome. If you are in the profession, what are the things that you like about it? Or if you want to be a nurse and have a question you would like to ask, please feel free to do so.  I will be writing my story of how I became a nurse soon, so subscribe to read more about that.