ALT-2 What Nursing Students should know
Every person interested in pursuing a career in nursing should consider a few things before attending nursing school. As a nurse you will be responsible for people's lives. Can you handle that kind of responsibility? Are you emotionally stable enough to see a baby, child, teenager or an adult in the prime of their lives die? Are you strong enough mentally to accept you did everything you could to save that person and they still died? Can you stomach unpleasant odors, such a vomit, stool or burned flesh? How about unpleasant sights, such as massive amounts blood, missing limbs, open wounds, cracked skulls, partially attached body parts, tubes sticking out of people's skull, draining the blood from it. Have you ever seen a heart monitor flat-line? Have you ever seen a family of a suddenly ill person waiting outside the Intensive care unit? Have you ever seen a family being ushered into the "quiet room," where they will wait for the doctor to come and tell them "I'm sorry, we did everything we could for your son/daughter but the massive head injury from the windshield just did to much damage?" Have you ever been in a delivery room, when a baby was born and not breathing?
As morbid as these examples may be, they are in fact, a reality. As a nurse not all of your patients will be elderly, suffering from pneumonia. I know all of this to be true, because I worked for six years in the medical field and have seen and experienced all of the above, leaving out some of the worst.
What I am suggesting is that every nursing student should know is that as much as you desire to help and heal people, while it's a very honorable and fulfilling career choice, it's not for everyone. You must be emotionally strong and mentally stable.
You must also realize that these patients are people and all fear death. The patients families will depend on you to pick them up and hold them as their life is crashing all around them. The doctors give the bad news and leave the nurses to pick up the pieces. If you care for a patient on a daily basis for a week or so and Mr. Smith is doing well and will be discharged on Friday, how do you feel when Mr. Smith is gone when walk into his room and find that he suddenly died from a blood clot caused by his back surgery? These patients will become part of your life, even for a short time. You will most likely find out more about Mrs. Green in four days of caring for her than you know about some of your own distant family members.
Everyone, considering becoming a nurse should spend a few days in a hospital. So you can see for yourself what it's really going to be like.
Besides working weekends and holidays, if someone doesn't show up and the staffing office or nurse can not find another nurse, guess who's doing a double? That would be you! If there is a disaster say a bus crash, you are at a family BBQ. You better eat your hot dog fast because you are on your way to work! One final note, you must love your job, because nurses are not paid anywhere near the amount of money they deserve!
If you still want to go to nursing school, bless you, the world needs more people just like you! Getting through nursing school requires a lot of time, determination and dedication. It's not easy to memorize all those bones and body systems and how each one works and what happens to the other organs when one stops doing its job. You need have a strong background in math and science. You will spend more hours studying, than you do in classes. Your social life will become very limited, your new best friend will be five, 10 pound textbooks, that you will need a suitcase to get around with. Caffeine will become your addiction and you should invest in a tape recorder for your lectures.
In closing, if you survive nursing school, which you will, you will have a reserved seat waiting for you on the big bus to heaven.
