Why Should I Be A Nurse?

I just love this ad.

Judging by the text, it looks like an ad from the UK.

I like it so much, I can’t even think of a joke to go with it.

I did this exact thing as a child, except I used my little sisters as my “patients” and the “hospital” was under the card table in my great-grandmother’s bedroom. Of course I always wore a paper cap!

My great-grandmother taught me to make the best nursing caps out of typing paper! I held it onto my hair with paper clips.

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Almost two years ago, I considered writing an e-book on why nursing was a great profession. I just found my introduction in an old “blog file” and realized I had never posted it. I do so now, because we can always use a reminder of what sent us into this profession. I now present, the intro to the e-book that never was!

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“You’ll always have a job.”

“You’ll always have something to fall back on!”

This is what I heard as a child when I first announced my decision to be a nurse.

It was (and is) absolutely true.

Nursing is the backbone of the health care industry in the United States.

Patients are admitted to hospitals solely for the fact that they require nursing care.

Advanced practice nurses (Nurse Practitioners) are needed to work in tandem with physicians in both rural and urban areas to ensure access to healthcare.

Nurses are needed to work with patients in the home, when hospitalization is no longer required but the need for nursing care remains.

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Only there aren’t enough nurses to meet the needs of our rapidly expanding health care systems.

Nurses are needed. Desperately.

Nursing instructors are frantically educating the next generation of nursing professionals, even as qualified applicants are placed on waiting lists or chosen by lottery.

Nursing professors are needed. Desperately.

Nursing will provide you job stability, a healthy (no pun intended) income, a flexible schedule and good benefits.

But there’s more.

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Nursing provides you a way to make a difference in your life, your patients’ lives, the life of the community in which you serve.

Nursing is, after all, a service profession.

You will serve by healing the sick and promoting health in the community. You will serve the disenfranchised of society and those who reside in upscale communities. You will see them as equals. They are your responsibility.

They are your patients.

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You will work hard. You will make decisions on the fly that will affect lives and make lasting impressions on those you care for. You will give of yourself until you have to dig from the depths of your soul to keep on giving. You will occasionally leave work exhausted, frustrated, maybe angry.

You will be present at the beginning of life and you will be there guiding a patient and their family through the process of dying. You will receive untold rewards from your patients. Perhaps it will be a heartfelt “thank you”. Or a shy smile from a toddler as you hand them a teddy bear. Maybe it will be the satisfaction of watching an anxious patient in pain relax and sleep for the first time in a day.

But let me tell you the greatest reason for choosing to be a nurse…

When you walk out of that job, whether it be a hospital, a clinic or a home, you will leave with the knowledge that you made a difference in someone’s life.

And you will be touched by those same lives.

In the end, even considering the benefits, the flexibility, the income and the respect you will receive as a nurse…

Making a difference in your patient’s lives is the best reason of all.