Nursing is the kind of profession that everyone knows something about, but only those who are actively working in it – or doing research about why they should take up such a career -really know a lot about. Everyone will have a vague idea of what a nurse does, but it is just that – vague – and it may not be entirely accurate.
This is why it can be hard if you’re considering becoming a nurse to determine whether or not it’s really the kind of career you would be happy in, or that you have the skills for. The fact that there is a nursing shortage means that you’ll often find recruiters mentioning nursing over other ideas, but what does this really mean? Is it such a great career, or is there just a need for more nurses?
The answer is that it’s both of these things. Nursing is a well-known job that people don’t know much about when it comes to the detail. This has led to a nursing shortage (among other reasons), and that is an issue for everyone. Therefore, before you dismiss the idea of becoming a nurse entirely, or even if you’re currently unsure whether or not it would be a good idea for you to take up the challenge of nursing, here are some of the best things about being a nurse. That’s not to say there are no bad points – every career will have bad points – but if you know the good points you’ll be able to make a decision.
High Job Security
The world of work is different now from what it used to be. Once, you would leave high school and either start a job or go to college and then start working – it depended on what you wanted to do. Today, you might still do this, but unlike in earlier times when there was an expectation that you would stick with the job you chose and rise through the ranks, today there is more of an expectation that every job you take on is only temporary. That’s how it can feel, at least.
This is because there is a lack of job security in most professions. The advancement of new technology can mean some roles become obsolete, for example, and the economy can mean that businesses close or roles have to be scaled back. All in all, in a lot of cases, people take on a job but are already looking for the next one, or at least keeping their options open. This is great for some people; they like the idea that things can change and they’ll try all kinds of different things. However, for others, it can be rather stressful.
If you choose nursing, you won’t have this issue. Nursing has a very high rate of job stability because nurses will always be essential. The fact that there is a shortage right now means that job security is even higher. Even if there were enough, however, hospitals and other medical (or cosmetic) establishments rarely ever have room for redundancies. This means their jobs would be theirs for as long as they wanted, and that might even be for life.
Patient Relationships
There are many different types of nursing to choose from, and that means there is a variety of potential reasons to choose this career – whether you have your sights set on a particular field or you’re interested in building transferrable skills to be able to explore what the umbrella of nursing has to offer – we’ll go into more detail about later in this article. For now, however, it’s important to note that no matter which direction you choose to take your nursing career, you’ll be able to create some amazing and positive relationships with your patients, and this can be highly rewarding.
In fact, studies have seen that the more positive a relationship is between medical staff and patients, the more quickly and effectively the patient will recover. This is due to positivity in mental and emotional health releasing the right hormones and chemicals into the body. Effectively, if you want to be a good nurse, cultivating good patient relationships is essential, and since it means meeting a lot of different people and learning about their lives, this is often a good thing, and something that many nurses cite as being one of the best parts of being a nurse.
Career Advancement
As we mentioned above, there are many different options when it comes to your nursing career in terms of the type of nurse you can be. This is a very positive thing, as it offers plenty of choice to anyone who might want to be a nurse. You can work with children, with older adults, in specific hospital departments where you can care for patients with cancer, who have suffered burns, or who need assistance with their mobility and so on.
Yet it’s not just the fact that there are plenty of options open to all nurses, and anyone who is interested in nursing will find something that suits them perfectly; it’s also about career advancement. If you are an ambitious person and you want to keep growing in your career, you might think you can’t do this if you are a nurse. However, the truth is very different. Once you have your RN – the first nursing qualification – you can then, along with plenty of experience and hard work, work towards other qualifications and certifications. There are many. Perhaps you’ll opt for a post master’s certificate in pediatric care. Maybe you’ll decide that you want to be a nurse practitioner. Perhaps you would like to be a nurse leader, or maybe you realize that administration is something you would be best at. The great thing is that no matter what it is you want to do, you’ll have the option to do it. This is even more true thanks to online learning that offers nurses the chance to work on their studies and not have to compromise on their jobs.
The Most Rewarding Career
Something that you should bear in mind when it comes to understanding why nursing is such a great career option is that it is hugely rewarding. This might not seem like much of an incentive when you consider you’ll have to absorb demanding shift work, long hours, and,when you start at least, low pay compared to other jobs. However, there are ways to enjoy shift work, the long hours are rewarded with additional time off, and as for pay, it is usually more than you think it will be, at least after the first few months.
When you take all this into account and you realize that, because you spend your day helping others and improving their lives, you are helping yourself to be happier as well, you’ll see that nursing is an ideal career. It’s the kind of job where you actually make a difference. Not many other professions can promise that. In a lot of cases, if a worker were just not to show up, they would lose their job and a new worker would be found, but everything would go on as normal. If that happened with a nurse, it would be felt much more acutely. If you want to do something that actually matters and makes a real difference to people that you can see and understand, then nursing might just be the answer.
Transferable Life Skills
Nurses have to know a lot and learn a lot to be good at their jobs. They have to keep learning too, since the medical profession is one that changes a lot. Yet it’s not all about medical knowledge and patient care; nurses need to learn a lot more, and the life skills they pick up can be put to good use in many other areas of their life. These skills include:
- Communication
- Compassion
- Empathy
- A love of learning
- Listening skills
- Hard-working attitude
- Patience
- Quick thinking
Plus there are more skills besides these. They can all be used in your personal and home life, and if you did ever decide that you no longer want to be a nurse or work in healthcare, they are the kinds of skills that can easily be transferred to any other profession and help you to be successful.
Flexible Working Arrangements
We’ve briefly mentioned shift work and long hours, and although this is part and parcel of being a nurse, the fact is that these working arrangements aren’t as bad as you might initially think. The fact is that shift work can have its advantages, and a lot of people who find they have to work in this way actually end up enjoying it.
That’s because shift work lends itself perfectly to flexible working. After all, if you work from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, that’s not flexible. It might be routine, and it might be easy to plan things, but you’ll only ever have the weekends to have days out, and evenings will often be taken up with mundane household chores. When you are a nurse and work shifts, you mayfind yourself with more than two days off a week to begin with – it might be three or four, depending on your shift pattern. As well as that, they’ll fall on different days, potentially different days each week. So although that will mean you have to work weekends sometimes, it also means you get time off during the week when most people are working. You can go to places without so many crowds, and really make the most of your time away from work.
