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<p>Wow, where do/will you live? Medicare taxes alone are about 4%. Then you have to add FICA (Social Security), federal/state/local income taxes. A better estimate is 20% - 30% for taxes.</p>
<p>I would never tell a kid who didn’t love numbers to become an actuary, even though it’s a field with high status, high pay, and lots of career opportunity. Similarly, the best reason to become a nurse is that you are actually interested in patient care and medicine.</p>
<p>The lifestyle is a tertiary consideration for most careers. Why? Because you just can’t predict. In some places there are nursing shortages. In others, nurse’s hours are being cut and given a huge influx of nurses from the outside the US, there are downward pressures on salaries. The local hospital in my neighborhood was acquired by a larger hospital group, and the nurses were all “fired” and then re-hired as contractors by a third party outsourcing company. Bye- bye seniority. Everyone now has exactly one year of service- even the ones who’ve been there forever.</p>
<p>So don’t go into nursing so you can get a regular facial. Not to mention the absurdity of your math. Taxes will be 25% (depending on where you live.) Your own medical insurance could be more than your rent if you have a spouse and kids on the policy.</p>
<p>And you really need to shadow a few nurses before you get any romantic ideas about Labor and Delivery. In many hospitals, Obstetrics is a surgical sub-specialty. So if the idea of an ER grosses you out, wait till you see an emergency C-section or an ectopic pregnancy or a post-labor fistula repair.</p>
<p>You sound like a nice kid. Don’t box yourself in until you’ve had a chance to grow up a little.</p>
<p>Princess, if you’re willing to get your masters degree for nursing, you might want to consider going into physical therapy instead. In a 40 hour week, a DPT will earn more than an RN with a masters. As a PT you might be able to work less than 40 and make a wage equal to a full-time nurse. (Usually) no weekends for a PT, no blood and guts, no night shifts, etc. etc. I’m just throwing it out there. </p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, that the undergrad path to PT is comparable to “pre-med.” So, if you’re turned off by a heavy or challenging course load, it may not be for you.</p>
<p>Bottom line is I agree with blossom.
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<p>I have also never heard of any sort of hazing in the nursing profession.</p>
<p>Perhaps you have heard it termed " lateral violence"</p>
<p>[ANA</a> Continuing Education | Lateral Violence: Nurse Againist Nurse](<a href=“http://www.nursingworld.org/mods/mod440/lateralfull.htm]ANA”>http://www.nursingworld.org/mods/mod440/lateralfull.htm)</p>
<p>[When</a> the Nurse Is a Bully - Well Blog - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/when-the-nurse-is-a-bully/]When”>When the Nurse Is a Bully - The New York Times)</p>
<p>[Michigan</a> Nurses Association - Lateral Violence](<a href=“http://www.minurses.org/lateralviolence.shtml]Michigan”>http://www.minurses.org/lateralviolence.shtml)</p>
<p>Princessbride,</p>
<p>I am a nurse (ironically,I was a teacher before I became a nurse). At my BSN program, it took a 3.8 college gpa to get into nursing school. It was a difficult, rigorous program that about near killed me (but I had a toddler when I started, and gave birth to another child right in the middle of my program, and I worked at a large hospital in a heavy duty trauma unit as well). I had NO trouble finding a job, and killing myself for a 4.0 gpa got offers from various prestigious ICU internships, so I was very happy with my first job.</p>
<p>I’ve never been paid double for holidays-we get time and a half for holidays, and they’ve even cut down on the days they will be willing to call a “holiday.” In order to get Christmas Day off, I would work Thanksgiving, New Years Day, Easter, and Fourth of July. It gets old. I don’t know any nurses who haven’t married well who are taking trips to Europe or getting lots of spa treatments. Most of the new nurses are living in modest apartments. They make enough to have a car, put food on the table and clothes on their backs (not designer, however), and a little savings. They do often have to work crappy shifts. I’ve never seen hazing of any kind, not to say it doesn’t exist elsewhere. The work can be quite rewarding, but it can be very physically and emotionally taxing. Depending on the nurse to patient ratio, the stress can be next to unbearable.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be great at math. Simple algebra is all that is required for calculating medication doses. You do have to be 100% accurate with your simple math, however.</p>
<p>I think nursing can be a very rewarding career. I would pursue a specialty of some kind. Perhaps go for nurse practitioner or nurse anesthetist. Definitely go critical care if you can get it because they cannot give you too many patients in ICU. Critical care experience can get you into lots of other doors. Surgery centers (day surgery centers, not hospital ones) are great because they are usually not required to be on call, they don’t work holidays, nights, or weekends. Some actually will get a bonus if the center does well (I have NEVER received one of those bonuses you speak of at my hospital).</p>
<p>12 hour shifts are my preference, but not all hospitals offer those. </p>
<p>It sounds like you are very idealistic about nursing, both in terms of the actual experience of doing it, as well as the financials. It CAN be rewarding, but it all boils down to being able to care for people-and people are messy in many ways when they are sick. Family members can also really wear you down. It’s not a profession for someone who can’t take a whole lot of bad with the good.</p>
<p>I did not read through the entire thread, but one comment I have about teaching is that it is not very flexible when you want to leave for an hour or so to go for programs or awards at your own kids’ schools. I always felt as though I was doing everything for everyone else’s kids and nothing for my own. Currently, I teach at a community college and it is a very family friendly position.</p>
<p>The nurses I know work varied schedules and seem to work very well around family commitments. It seems as though nurses make a considerable amout more than I do.</p>
<p>Princess Bride, as a nurse for over 25 years and a nurse practitioner, I appreciate the interest in nursing. But, it seems to me you interest is misplaced. I have yet to hear you say that you enjoy working with and around sick and ill people. I have yet to hear you say that you enjoy learning about medical disease and treatment. Finally, I have yet to hear you say that you work well under stress and you don’t mind death and dying. What I did hear you say is that you would love teaching. That seems to be your answer.</p>
<p>emeraldk - Only one of your links offers any statistics to substantiate its claim and I can’t determine the sample size on that one. Sounds interesting but I think a comparative study investigating the numbers of rookies in other professions who also leave in the first year because of perceived workplace violence would be more enlightening.</p>
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<p>This is an excellent point with regard to staff nursing as well. The night nurses are waiting on you to go home. You can’t wake up and decide to be sick. If your children get sick at school, you CANNOT leave your shift to take them home-so you better have a spouse who can leave work at a moment’s notice. You cannot leave during the day to catch the school play or do the mommy/child donut hour at school. While you have a bit of flexibility in scheduling which days you work and have a fair amount of notice, you will still miss plenty of things you would love to be able to do with your kids. You could work nights, but I’ve done that, and it’s really difficult to pull off when you have children (in terms of finding the energy to be a mom while also being chronically sleep deprived).</p>
<p>Re the mention of physcial therapy. I worked at one time with 3 women that were in Physical Therapy and pregnant (over a 2 year period) They loved the flexibility and two went part time without a big disruption in their schedules. It isn’t for everyone though, but another avenue for flexibility. My cousin also went the PT route, it was demanding, but she was a “stay at home” mom at heart, didn’t need benefits with her husbands and worked 3-4 days a week and was home by 2pm some days, others 5.
My sister, when an LPN, got over 30.00 an hour, working in nursing homes and not taking the insurance…her highest was 36.00 but a horrible place. This is in CT but it can be done. (she was on eveing/night shift)</p>
<p>My mother worked in labor and deliver for over forty years and I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t anything close to a picnic. You may have to do some heavy lifting, deal with patients that aren’t all that patient and manage a ward with many patients with only a few nurses. She was a charge nurse too and I think that she also worked in administration when she got much older. She also had a work-related back injury. I have a sister that’s a nurse and it’s enabled her to have a lot of schedule flexibility in raising her kids. I also worked in hospital wards for four years so I got to see a lot of what they do. It is not always pleasant. I recall helping put a body in a bag to be taken to the morgue. Sometimes you see doctors screw up and you have to decide whether or not you want to say something.</p>
<p>The schedules way back when were every other weekend and then some days in-between. There were nurses with families that liked the flexibility even though they were pretty tired after shifts. There were second and third shift differentials (extra pay) that some people liked over having disrupted sleep cycles.</p>
<p>You may have to worry about catching things or getting something serious in handling fluids and needles.</p>
<p>There are many kids that come over to the engineering forums and ask which engineering major makes the most money. The usual response is to do what you really love or at least what you think you’ll really love. Getting through an engineering program is really tough and you’ll need that love to get you through it to the end. If you don’t like it, will you really want to spend the rest of your working life doing it?</p>
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<p>We’re in California and the school districts get money (or rather, don’t get money) from the state. It is almost impossible for a new teacher to break in and stick around long enough to feel comfortable that their seniority will save their job. Budget woes are a killer…The ones with many years in are safe.</p>
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<p>Yes, you are behind the times in a lot of places. Budget cuts have eliminate jobs for many teachers. It’s a “last hired, first fired” system and that has reached into “tenured” (for lack of a better term) teachers.</p>
<p>Anyone who does not have a real passion for nursing or teaching will burn out quickly. Those are tough jobs for people who cannot doing anything else.</p>
Nurse case managers get to work from home M-Friday if they work for HUGE insurance companies. I left hospital nursing to do case management and make $77,000 a year! I had to pay my dues by working hospital jobs to gain experience. Nurses can also become health educators in their area of expertise.
this thread is 6 years old. please use old threads for informational purposes only