What Are The Best Things About Being A Nurse?

One thing is obvious when we look at the world’s population; more nurses are required to take care of it. This is because there are more people being born, plus people tend to have a longer life expectancy. This means that there is more chance that we will get sick and more chance that we will need a nurse’s excellent, expert help. So the more people who choose to train to become nurses, the better.

Unfortunately, we are suffering from a shortage of nurses at the moment; this is something that is happening across the entire world. One of the reasons for this might be that there are some negative connotations associated with nursing, such as the long hours and low pay that nurses have to suffer through. However, long hours and low pay aren’t actually part of that in a lot of cases. This is why it’s best to completely research what it means to be a nurse and find out the best things about nursing if you are contemplating taking on this career challenge or even if you think nursing might be right for you. Let’s take a look at what these good things are, and you can decide whether the pros outweigh the cons once you know more about them.

High Job Security

The world of jobs is changing all the time, and something that everyone needed just a few years ago is now obsolete, and those who were working in that career may have to retrain and find something else to do. This can make finding a career that you can stick with for decades, even for life, difficult, assuming that’s what you want to do. If you go into nursing after training at Carson-Newman, however, you’ll find that you enter into a career that is – as far as anyone can say – a secure one. Nurses are not going to become obsolete.

This essentially means that, once you have gained your nursing qualifications and begin work, picking up experience as you go, you’ll be able to stay in the job you choose for as long as you want to. Plus, there will be many opportunities to enhance your career as time goes on. So you can be sure that you will be able to be a nurse for as long as you choose to, giving you complete job security.

Patient Relationships

Nurses have to learn a lot of information. It doesn’t matter what department you choose to work in; you’ll need to understand everything about medication, cleanliness, leadership, and so much more. When you start to investigate the many different roles that a nurse can take and the number of different online degrees that will get you the career you want, you’ll see that there are a huge number of opportunities.

Yet something that every nursing position has in common, no matter what you do or where you work, is that you need to be able to develop excellent patient relationships. Nurses can form very strong bonds with their patients. You might think of a patient and a doctor forming a professional relationship, but the truth is that doctors often don’t have time for that aspect of their job – it’s not like it is on TV. So it’s the nurses who need to be there for the patients’ emotional and mental health and their physical health. Of course, as a nurse, you’ll need to have plenty of compassion for those you are treating, but the relationships that you can form will be good for everyone; it’s a definite positive part of the job.

The Most Rewarding Career

Ask anyone to make a list of the most rewarding careers, and nursing is sure to come somewhere near the top. Of course, not everyone can handle a career as full-on and intense as nursing, but if you can, you can rest assured that you will have discovered a career that will give you plenty of good things, including being incredibly rewarding. In other words, all the hard work associated with nursing will be worth it when you look at what you get in return in terms of job satisfaction and a job well done.

The main job of any nurse is to help sick people. These might be people who are simply not going to get better, and they need care and love at the end of their lives. It might be people who have been through something extremely traumatic, and they’ll need a lot of help too. It could just be someone who, although not too physically hurt, is scared and needs comfort. All of these patients, and many more besides, can be helped by a nurse. Nursing will show you the best and worst of people, but the good should outweigh the bad.

Transferable Life Skills

Nurses need to learn a lot to do well at their jobs and help as many people as possible. However, as well as gaining an in-depth knowledge of medical information and how to help people, nurses learn a lot more besides; they learn all about life skills that they can use in many different situations in their own lives or even, should they choose to, in their next job if they realize that nursing isn’t quite right for them for any reason.

These skills are called ‘transferable skills’ because you can transfer them to any part of your life. This means you’ll have more chances to move forward in your career and personal life than those without these skills – nursing gives you that opportunity. Some of the skills we’re talking about include:

• Patience
• Compassion
• Communication
• Listening
• Staying calm in a difficult situation
• Empathy
• Hard work
• The ability to learn
• Thinking on your feet

These are only some of the skills; there are many more. As you can see, these skills would be useful in many different elements of life, and if you are a nurse, you can be sure you’ll gain them all.

You Command Respect

Nurses are respected hugely by the majority of people who understand how much hard work they have to do and how much help they give. Of course, the nursing profession is a mystery to many people, but even if they don’t know exactly what it entails, they know that it’s something not everyone can do – something they couldn’t do – and so they respect those who can do it.

Of course, if you’re looking for a career that garners respect, nursing is not the only one. The fire service is a good example, police in many cases, teachers too. Perhaps even those who have built businesses from the group up. So you don’t have to become a nurse if you want respect from others. However, this is an important aspect of the nursing profession to consider; it comes with the job.

Flexible Working Arrangements

What is the first thing you think of when you consider the working hours of a nurse? Most people will automatically assume that they have to work extremely long hours, and often at night. They will assume that there is no chance to have a good work-life balance and that shifts are arduous.

There is some truth to this. When you first start out as a nurse, the shifts will be long, and you will need to work at night and at weekends and public holidays, depending on your shift pattern (people get sick every day of the year, after all). Even as you progress, these shift patterns will need to be covered. However, perhaps surprisingly, nursing can also be a very flexible career. You can often choose your shifts as you get more experienced, and you can speak to colleagues and employers if you need a specific date away from work, such as for a child’s school play or a special anniversary.

Plus, don’t forget that there are certain advantages to working shifts in themselves. For example, if you are working at night, you can go about your other chores when everyone else is at work, giving you more freedom and more space – the stores will be less busy, for example. Also, some people thrive on shift work, enjoying the different working hours, and for them, a job such as nursing would be ideal. However, even if you don’t like the idea of working shifts, there are nursing jobs that don’t require them; if you were a nurse in a school, for example, or in a doctor’s office, you would only work weekdays between certain hours. So there is a lot of flexibility in how a nurse works, offering you the best chance of success.

Remuneration

When you choose to become a nurse, most of the time, it’s not about how much you can earn; this will often come as an afterthought because your main aim will be how many people you can help and how many lives you can change for the better. However, there are rewards in nursing other than the salary.

However, even the most altruistic of people will need money to live on, which means nursing can often be something those who would otherwise love the job and be good at it bypass – they just think there isn’t enough money in it to live on. They’re not looking for a fortune; they just need enough for the rent and for food and so on.

The problem is, a myth has grown up around nursing wherein people believe that they are paid very little. So right at the start, some might consider the remuneration low, but that will quickly rise once the probationary period is over and the nurse is settled in their career.

Plus, there is a lot of career progression in nursing. Starting as an RN (registered nurse) doesn’t mean you have to end your career in the same place; you can rise through the ranks with experience and additional qualifications to any level you feel comfortable at, and each level will have a rise in salary attached to it.

Career Advancement

We’ve just mentioned how career advancement in nursing can come about and how it is entirely possible if you put in the hard work and gain the credential you need to make it happen. Now we will look at this in more detail, so you have a complete understanding of just what it might entail.

Where you end up in your nursing career will entirely depend on you and your own personal goals. Some will prefer to remain an RN until they retire, happy in that position and comfortable in the way they work. This is a great thing. Some people, however, will be keen to advance and might go from an RN to BSN, and this is also a great thing. There is room for everyone within the nursing profession, no matter what level of job you might choose to achieve.

This can often be a surprise to those who thought that there was only one kind of nurse and no chance to advance your medical career when you took on the challenge of the nursing profession. Yet it’s true; nurses really can boost their careers in all kinds of ways. Not only can they move upwards through the different types of nursing levels that exist, but they can move to different areas of nursing where they feel their skills will be of most use. So they might want to work with children, or perhaps they think that the ER would be the ideal place for them. On the other hand, it could be a cancer department that interests them the most, or perhaps they want to be an OR nurse. They might not even want to work in a hospital at all, preferring to be in a private clinic or visiting patients at home to help them there.

There is so much choice when it comes to nursing that if you know you can handle the pressure and the amount of information you need to learn, there will be a space for you to do something that interests you.