There are many careers you can choose that are easier than nursing. If you are looking for a job you can go to, do it quickly and fairly effortlessly, and then leave and not have to think about it until you return to your desk, then nursing is certainly not going to suit you. However, if you want a career that will push you, challenge you, and make you feel – and be – needed, then nursing might be the right fit. It’s a hard job but an incredibly rewarding one, and for the right people, it’s a career they can enjoy for many years.
However, making a choice to study to gain your nursing qualifications is not always going to be easy. Of course, some people will know right away that they are – or aren’t – cut out to be nurses, but others might not yet have an answer to this question, and they are torn between choosing a nursing career and something else. This is why it’s important to think of why you want to become a nurse. Everyone will have their own reasons, and if they are important enough, then nursing should be your first choice. Here are just some of the reasons why nursing is a good career move; if you agree with any of them, your next step could be nursing school. Read on to find out more.
Salary
We can’t really talk about nursing without at least touching on the salary aspect. For a long time, people have been under the impression that nurses are not paid very much, and in some ways, this is true – for the amount of learning, work, and effort required, the salary might not seem overly fair everyone. However, in terms of a living wage, it is a good one. Of course, there will be factors to take into consideration, such as:
- The level of nursing you have reached
- The type of degree you have
- Your location (even down to which country)
- Your experience
- Whether you have a specialty or not
- Whether you work full-time or part-time
However, in general terms, the average pay for a nurse in the United States is currently around $75,000 a year, although it could be as low as $50,000 or as high as £116,000, depending on the factors listed above. As you can see, these salaries are not as low as you might have expected, so if the pay was something that was worrying you, and maybe was the only thing stopping you from applying to be a nurse, it might be time to think again.
You’ll Have A True Sense Of Purpose
Even if the salary wasn’t as reasonable as it does appear to be, there are many other reasons to be a nurse; money is important, but if you want a career that is truly rewarding and will give you a genuine sense of purpose, nursing ticks all the boxes, and the salary is a secondary concern. In fact, most nurses will quickly tell you that if you are in the job just for the money, you won’t do very well – you need to really care about your work to be the best nurse you can be and see the most career progression.
Nurses are with people in their worst moments when they are scared, hurt, perhaps even dying. They have to help in the most compassionate way while also putting their medical knowledge to good use and helping in practical terms as well. You will be there in moments of crisis, and people will turn to you for advice, information, and comfort. In this way, a lot of nurses – and certainly the best ones – feel that they have a sense of purpose every day and that they really do make a difference. There are very few careers in which this can honestly be said to be the case, and nursing is certainly one of them. If you want to be the one who makes a difference through your actions, become a nurse.
Nursing Is A Flexible Career
In the past, one of the issues that many people found to put them off the idea of nursing as a career was the working hours. They were long, the shift patterns were hard, and it meant that the work-life balance was difficult to achieve. For those who wanted to have a family or liked to go out with friends, or had plenty of hobbies, nursing just wasn’t going to be a good fit with their lives.
Things have certainly changed in this regard over the last few decades. Today, nursing is a flexible career in many ways, just as lots of other careers have become. Although nurses will still need to work shifts, and although that does mean some weekend working and working over holidays and night shifts when you look at the hours worked, they are not as long as they once were. In fact, the average nurse will work for four or five days in a row, working eight hours during those days, and then have three or four days off before it starts again. So the work-life balance is not hard to achieve when you’re a nurse; as long as you know your shifts in advance, you can make sure everything else is arranged around them.
Plus, once you have gained your nursing qualification, you can go on to study for additional degrees in other areas of nursing, meaning you have a lot more choice in terms of how you work. You might decide that hospital working isn’t for you, and you would prefer a private clinic, making your working hours less shift-based, for example. You can go for many options, and doing research such as looking into being a nurse practitioner vs RN will help you understand more and determine the route that’s right for you.
Nurses Are Needed
Due to a variety of factors, including the fact that there are many myths around about nursing that put people off the idea before they look more closely into nursing as a profession, there is a shortage of nurses not just in the US but all around the world. Therefore, if you were to feel that nursing was the right career path to go down for you, you would find that you have plenty of choices when it comes to finding a job at the end of your studies – nurses are needed everywhere. Whether you choose to remain in your home country or state or travel elsewhere, it’s highly likely that you’ll find a nursing position no matter where you go. With this in mind, you have all the freedom and choice you could possibly need, and that’s all thanks to nursing.
Of course, this also means there is a good amount of job stability. Once you have a position in a hospital, clinic, or the many other areas in which a nurse can work, you will often be able to stay in that job for as long as you choose to, assuming you are good at what you do. This kind of job stability is rare, particularly in today’s world where people are almost expected to change not just jobs but entire careers at least once in their lives, and where technology is changing the face of the job market, adding new options and removing others. If you want to be a nurse and work in one place until you retire, this is usually something you can do.
You Can Find Your Niche
Being a nurse is certainly never going to be boring when there are so many different options to look into, and every day can – and usually will – be entirely different from the next. However, no matter what it is you might be interested in, you will be able to find a nursing position to help you work in that arena. Of course, you may need to carry out additional study and perhaps even work towards an additional qualification – or more than one – but once you know that this is needed, you can look into how to go about obtaining your degree; your supervisors will be able to help you.
Not only are there already a vast range of different nursing positions you might like to look more closely into, but new ones are being developed all the time. If, for example, you like working with new technology, you can do so in nursing, and you might even go on to teach others how to use it too. On the other hand, if you prefer to do things the traditional way, there will be options to allow for this too. Plus, everything in between.
If you are worried that you will lose a part of yourself when becoming a nurse because the job is, by its very nature, so patient-centric, don’t be concerned; there is so much choice that you will be able to find your niche and work in the way you want to while still helping patients as much as possible.