I am getting out of nursing to become a teacher
Hi. I made the decision to get out of the nursing profession about two years ago. I have been an RN for three years. I have floated in ER, ICU, Med/Surg and Labor and Delivery. In the back of my mind I always thought, “working conditions will get better with the more experience I have”. I finally have come to the conclusion that my working conditions are not changing, in fact, are getting worse.
I come home every night with knots in my shoulders from the stress that I go through. I too get physically and mentally strained from being a nurse. Families are so insultive and expect things to happen ASAP. Do they not realize that I am running around with my head cut off trying to keep up with all the requests, duties, and paper work?
After being in a depressed state, not to mention injurying my back, I am getting out of nursing. I have been made to feel guilty by some because they do not understand the torment I face every day.
I currently am working on my teaching license. I start student teaching in less than a month. Although I am still putting in long hours in the evenings and weekends as a nurse, I am so excited about my career change. Yes, I realize that teachers have a lot of paper work and have crowded classrooms. But hey, my schedule will be a lot better and I do not have to worry that I will hurt anyone (i.e. med error), because there is a shortage of workers.
I feel bad for the nursing profession–but hey I am sick of being depressed with the unrealistic working conditions and expectations—I am only one person. I know I will be more effective when I am not stretched as thin. I don’t have the answer for the nursing profession, but glad I am leaving it. PEACE!
I have been told that if I do not like it, I can leave. At the end of the day |I am just another nurse. I like being a nurse and the patients make it all worth while. I hate the management and all the buzz words, latest benchmarking, bla, bla, which the senior nurses talk about with a cup of coffee, while the rest of us are rushed off our feet. I hate feeling like this, and I want to leave nursing and find something that makes me feel much less stressed and doesnt make me feel worthless.
I want out and I've got to get out
I've been a nurse for 11 years. It is so awful...I just can't take it anymore. It's not thepatients, they are no problem. It's everything else...working short, treated like crap, etc.
I want out and I've got to get out
why not move to a different department? would that help?
Thanks for your honesty
low pay
long hours
unbelievably rude demanding parents
disrespectful children..... I doubt you will find many teachers that would recommend this. I think that teaching would be ok if you started right out of college at age say, 22 or 23. the you could get your 30 years in with a decent retirement?
Stop wasting people's time, and get back to "kindergarten".
Anyway, while taking pre-med classes at night I joined an alternative certification program that placed non- education majors in inner city, needy schools while working toward certification. I am in my third year teaching fourth grade in Baltimore city now, and in the past five semesters have earned a masters degree in teaching (M.A.T.) and taken four of the eight hard sciences classes I need for med school. (I plan to apply next year.)
Teaching is truly no better than nursing in terms of the job stressors. Even with my master's degree I am making far less now than I did as a first-year nurse- my salary is 35k a year, barely enough to live at a middle-class level in the city. I put in long hours after school with BS paperwork, making lesson plans, accomodation matrixes, IEP-related documentation, grades, parental correspondance, etc. I put up with shit all around, all day long- from disrespectful kids, ignorant parents, administrators, state people, etc. I spend my own money on basic classroom supplies. I spend more time focusing on classroom management than I do actually teaching. I agree with whoever said that teaching has to truly be a calling for you if you want to make it long-term. I entered this on a lark, just for the experience and to have a steady income while going to school. It was not worth it. I would go back to nursing in a heartbeat.
ha ha bunch of idiot. i was in hospital another day and a nurse have to eat my shit while I'm taking a shit right there and then. ha ha, i asked that dumb b*tch how my shit taste like and the b*tch said it's delicious.
I am a student, that is just beginning in the physical sciences going toward my nursing career. I have read all these honest posts, and now I am completely bewildered in becomming a nurse. It sounds awful now that I am reading all these posts. I am a mid-life change - of - career woman (46) who was thinking of going into the nursing profession. Not anymore. Now that I have read how horrible it will be, I am going to forget the nursing classes, and go into something I will love - speciality education, distance learning. At my age, I dont think I can handle nursing(physically) or mentally. And I have no patience for rude personell, clients, or co-workers. This profession sounds very TAXING, all the way around. Thanks for changing my mind before I begin nursing school. I want to be happy in my life career not miserable.
You are making the right decision, trust me. I was 40 when I go licensed and nine years later, it has taken its toll.
Most patients are great, but the ones who are not really are not. But you still have to take care of them, even those who are physicially abusive and UNDERSTAND
Most patients are great, but the ones who are not really are not. But you still have to take care of them, even those who are physicially abusive and UNDERSTAND what they are doing. After all they are not really patients anymore, they are CUSTOMERS. Patients or families who truly believe they are the most important, regardless of where they fall in priorities. The most vivid example? The patient I once had whose roommate we were coding. The woman reached over and whipped back the curtain that had been pulled, loudly and rudely asked if she was going to be given the glass of water she asked for or not? Because obviously that was more important than the woman who could not breathe in the bed beside her.
I have been swore at, slapped, kicked, punched etc... all by patients, and yes some of them knew exactly what they were doing. The ones who do not can be excused, though the pain does not lessen just because you know they don't understand.
You work nights, holidays and weekends. All of which you know before you become a "real" nurse, what they don't tell you is that you will be very, very lucky to work a unit with a nurse manager who actually gives a shit that you have a life outside of nursing and just schedule you they way they want with no thought or consideration of what you may need. Then of course there is mandatory overtime. Not enough nurses, well someone has to stay, doesn't matter if you end up working 20 hours and giving meds that can kill someone. With frequent short staffing this is an issue the patients and potential patients should care about, but it seems no one does. 3 bills about it have been in committee in Washingto and not one has ever gone further.
But the worst of it all is the other nurses who opt to make everyone around them unhappy.Horizonal violence or bullying is endemic in the profession. Numerous articles have been done on it in nursing journels yet what gets done about it? Nothing. Where is the ANA? Is that the sound of crickets I hear? The UK is starting to tackle it, so is Australia, New Zealand and Canada, but in America? The sound of crickets. In nursing your fellow nurses can treat you like shit, the docs can treat you like shit, your nurse managers can treat you like shit, adminstration can treat you like shit and it doesn't matter. It is part of what is driving the nursing shortage and still no one cares. Studies done and no one does a damn thing. The way nurses are treated has done a fine job of making everyone so afraid that to get nurses to stand together against the working conditions just doesn't happen. Everyone is afraid of not only job loss but also of being blackballed, being labeled and treated as an incompetant nurse which means no job later, that all we do is bitch and moan and fed on weaker nurses than ourselves.
The nursing shortage is not just about demographics, younger nurses entering the profession often leave faster than the older nurse because younger women have been socialized to not put up with such behaviour as much as the older of us. Studies have borne this out as well.
I wish to hell I had chosen another profession. Go back to school? How? I work nights have a schedule that always changes for the needs of the unit, not my needs. Children in college that has to be paid for, a husband also taking classes so he does not have to rely on factory work that is rapidly becoming extinct. So what does one do? Hold on, hope like hell you can retire before you have an injury, get that paycheck and pay the bills. And hopefully find those few and far between nuggets that can make nursing rewarding so you can get up and do it again.
I treat my patients kindly and always help the new nurses out but I am at my wits end. I physically and mentally can not do this any longer. I hate that I have wasted my life in this profession. I tell my children almost everyday they can not become a nurse.
Good Luck to you. I hope you find true happiness.
teaching can be hard. especially if you have a lot of lug nuts working at the district
Have you found a business yet? I want to go into business too. I do not know what I can do. I am so desperate to get out of nursing after 1 year in the hospital and 1 in home health
~unhappy, even though I am getting married on Saturday
Turn this one