There are some excellent reasons to become a nurse. For one thing, it’s a field that is growing, with more and more scope for those who want to become nurses to get the career they are dreaming of. For another, it’s a rewarding career; you’ll get to help a huge number of people and ensure they live happy, healthy lives. Plus, there is a lot of job security when you’re a nurse; nurses are needed, and you won’t be let go unless there is a very good reason. This gives you a lot more control over your career and your life.
However, along with all the good things, there are some other considerations to think about when determining whether or not nursing is the right option for you. You must think about these other things just as much as you think about the positive reasons for being a nurse because if you don’t, they will come as a surprise, and that might mean you realize a little too late that nursing is not the right choice for you. With that in mind, read on for some additional things to consider when you want to be a nurse.
Educational Requirements
In the past, nurses could leave high school, apply for a job at a hospital, and learn what they needed to learn mostly on the job, with a little training elsewhere in addition to this. However, that’s not the case these days; nurses have to have a great deal of knowledge and education, and that means they need to apply for, study for, and obtain a degree from a college. This will be a bachelor’s degree, and only once you have this can you start your nursing career.
Once you have this degree, all the doors to whatever nursing area you want to work in will be open to you, but it’s not something you can earn overnight. If you want to be a nurse, you’ll need to understand how long the qualification will take you to achieve and what you can do while you’re studying for it.
Plus, if you want to go further in your career, you’ll need to ensure you put aside time to study for additional qualifications, such as a DNP FNP, so that you can enjoy excellent career progression. There are always new things to learn when you’re a nurse, so make sure you like studying because you’ll need to do plenty of it if you want to do well in this kind of career.
Personality
Not everyone is cut out to be a nurse, no matter how interested in the subject of helping people they might be. This is because nurses will need to have a certain kind of personality, with specific personality traits, if they are going to do well in their work, be good nurses that patients enjoy dealing with, and – importantly – enjoy what they are doing. If you have the right personality and you’re willing to work hard, then nursing is sure to be the ideal choice.
So what kind of personality do you need to be a nurse? Some of the most important traits include:
- Patience
- Respect
- Perseverance
- Compassion
- Empathy
- Quick-thinking
- Communication
- Calmness
If you are the kind of person who quickly gets frustrated or impatient or who can’t put themselves in other people’s shoes to understand why they feel like they do, nursing is going to be hard for you. Luckily, there are other careers in which you can help people without needing these specific personality traits, so be honest with yourself, understand who you really are, and choose a career that will make you happy.
Responsibility
When you are a nurse, no matter what level you might be working at, what area of nursing you have chosen, or even where you are working, you will need to be a responsible person. From the very moment you step foot in a new nursing job, you will be expected to take on a great deal of responsibility and get on with the work at hand, whatever it might be. Although there will be people there to help you – a nurse will always have colleagues to fall back on when really required; nursing is not a lonely profession by any means – everyone is going to be busy, and the more you can do by yourself, the better for everyone, including the patients.
Just some of the responsibilities of being a nurse include giving medication, monitoring patients, keeping accurate records, reporting to other nurses and doctors, ensuring patients are where they need to be for tests or procedures, and developing treatment plans (or at least having some input into them).
If you can hit the ground running and are confident in your abilities and your knowledge, nursing will be an enjoyable, rewarding career. If you find that you are the kind of person who prefers to follow rather than lead, is nursing really going to work in your favor? Perhaps, although it’s certainly something to take your time thinking about to make sure.
Fitness And Health
It’s highly likely you will have thought long and hard about the mental requirements of being a nurse. You’ll know how much you need to learn and study, you’ll know that you need to be responsible and quick-thinking. You’ll know that you have to be good at decision-making. You might also have considered the emotional requirements of a nurse; you’ll have to be empathetic without letting your emotions cloud your thinking, and you’ll need to understand how important it is to let your feelings out rather than bottling them up, perhaps by seeing a therapist on a regular basis.
What you might not have considered is the physical fitness level that nurses should have. Although not a prerequisite to studying to become a nurse, being relatively physically fit will become more and more important as you start to do your nursing work. You’ll be on your feet for much of your shift, which can be upwards of twelve hours. You will also be moving around a lot, and you’ll potentially be carrying heavy objects. You’ll certainly need to move patients to clean them, dress wounds, change their bedding, and so in. Are you able to do this without hurting yourself? If you want to be a nurse, it’s a good idea to get as physically fit as you can while you study and then continue that fitness regime in your career – you’ll get more out of it that way.