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Choose nursing, choose happiness

Stressed Out Nurses Weekly, March 10, 2008

By Kathy Garrison, MSN, RN

I cannot ever remember a time in my life when I did not want to be a nurse. If forced to think back, I would say that my exposure to the healthcare world through my younger brother's chronic health conditions is what led me to choose nursing as a career. I have yet to regret the choice. Nursing is one of the career choices you can make that can last a lifetime.

Now I find that I'm often on the "other side" of career decisions, offering solicited and unsolicited advice on "what to be when I grow up." Mostly this advice goes to my own children and their friends, and as clinical educator in a community hospital, I am sometimes asked for suggestions and options for healthcare careers. In today's world, almost any career in healthcare is a guarantee for long-term employment and stability. Nursing, however, can also offer one of great flexibility and diversity. My advice is always this: Choose something that you will enjoy every single day you do it.

We spend a third to half of our lives doing our jobs, and life is too short to go to work wishing the day were done. Sometimes this happens not because we dislike what we are doing, but because of where we are doing it or that we have become bored with the "same old routine." In either case, with nursing, it is fairly easy to transition to a different setting or a different specialty to avoid feeling bored.

I began my career in a Burn ICU. I loved the challenge of burn nursing and found it quite rewarding to see a burn victim recover and go home, knowing that it was due mostly to the nursing care they received. But the constant presence of the immense pain they endured and the grief I felt when a victim-who had fought to recover-died, took a toll on my mental health. I decided I needed a break, to do something where there was little or no pain and suffering. So I made a career move to the home health arena of nursing. This was good. I found I could use my critical care skills with a ventilator dependant ALS patient in his home. (I also got married and moved out of my home state; another asset to nursing: its portability!)

Soon, however, I found myself dreading getting up to go to work. Bored with the routine of the care, off I went to find my next niche! I'm not sure if I found it or it found me, but my next "love" was emergency nursing.

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