How to Decide if Nursing is the Right Field For You

Everyone wants to be helpful, compassionate and trusted, but does everyone want to do that for a profession? This article talks about different attributes of nursing, and hopefully it will help you answer the question “Is nursing right for me?”.

If saving lives is your lifetime dream

Having the opportunity to save someone’s life is not a daily occurrence … unless you work in a hospital. All nurses have a wild spectrum of skills, but one of them is being CPR certified. As you all know, that is a very crucial skill to have in times of when someone is choking, not breathing, or entering cardiac arrest. This, along with many other skills that you will utilize in the hospital, will LITERALLY save lives. Major things like CPR, codes, or other intense moments such as that can happen often, but making patients comfortable, easing their pain, and being their voice when they have none also saves lives. Spending an extra five or 10 minutes with a patient just to see how they’re doing or feeling can flip their day rightside up.

If you have inexhaustible amounts of  sympathy and empathy

Are you a sympathetic and compassionate person? Sympathy and empathy are HUGE traits that are important for nurses to exemplify. When a nurse feels and shows sympathy to a patient, it shows that they care, and caring is your main responsibility as a nurse.  Are you willing to put yourself in your patient’s shoes and treat them with respect, even when they are being frustrating or you’re at the end of your rope?

If you want a flexible schedule

Being a nurse has the benefit of having a flexible schedule that accommodates a busy lifestyle, whether you are a night owl or an early bird. Nurses are needed at ALL times of the day regardless of location.

If you crave an active workspace

Not everybody wants a desk job. If you’re looking for something other than a desk job – quite the opposite, in fact – nursing is the true epitome of that. Be prepared to clock in more than a few miles on your FitBit with each shift, because you’ll be rounding and picking up those steps!

As a nurse you will rarely get bored. There are always so many places to be and so many things to do. Instead of sitting at a desk waiting for or making phone calls all day, you can be out and about constantly being productive and proactive. That proactivity pays off, because in the end of the day, you can give yourself a proud pat on the back for the day full of service and good deeds.

If you like leaving options open

If you’re looking for a career with a very wide variety of things to do, nursing has MANY different specialties to choose from. There’s at least 99! Although they are all “nursing” jobs, all of them focus on very different things. For example, there are nurses who work in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) that work with both ill and premature babies, there’s nurses who work in Labor and Delivery, Long Term Care, Psych, Community Health, Med/Surg, and many, many other places.  For more information about nursing specialties, click here to read more details on another blog!

Nurses who work in the NICU are very different from nurses who research how to improve outcomes of health in the population. There is a very wide range of career options to dive into in the nursing industry, so don’t worry about ever getting bored!

If you’re concerned about job security

Nurses will ALWAYS be a necessary part in the healthcare system. Those systems cannot function without them. Even when the economic status is uncertain, nurses can be confident that there will still be a demand for nurses. so job security is the last of things to worry about.

Nurses are not just normal people with an altruistic trait. They are selfless individuals who have devoted their life and career to be at the service of others who are in greater need than themselves. Nursing is not for everybody. An individual must have passion and the willpower to accept the reality to constantly be at the service of others, taking account of both the rewards and the consequences.

If you’re passionate about changing lives

Nursing is a profession that has an impact on individuals and they are the ones who can literally make or break a patient’s experience. One bad experience in a certain setting can scar someone forever, but one person who reached out to them in their grief and pain can truly lift and heal them.

Nursing is for you

Nurses play a major role and make a difference in a countless number of lives. So if you want to be that person that works hard for a good cause, is proactive and quick to search for opportunities to help, learn and grow, look into Nightingale’s ADN Program, which is hybrid-virtual and as few as 16 months, or complete our BDN Program in 32!

Author: Chelynne Lee