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Gotta get all As and Bs in pre-reqs and school is competitive. The great thing about nursing is the versatility. There are a hundreds of fields, many of them not in the hospital. Home health, Dialysis, Clinical coordinator, outpatient facility, flight nurse, army/navy/air force RN, SWAT nurse, forensics nurse, the list goes on and on... I started doing home health, then did flu vaccines, then worked in operating room, then worked in the hospital, then found a field I really liked in dialysis. Starting in this area is 60k+
There's a lot of sacrifices that I make. I work on most holidays (people are sick on holidays too, somebodies got to take care of em). Christmas week I put in 76 hours that WEEK. 12h shifts, I've worked over 14 hours in a day. I work with really sick peoples' blood everyday. If one of my patients has AIDs and they get blood on my hangnail, guess what? I'm probably gonna contract AIDs.
My friend just got a job at Stanford after being a nurse for 2 years, 62$/hr, free medical, 9% 401k match after a year. Of course this is in Nor cal where it's all inflated, but still.
I hear you. I have a ton of friends in CT and NYC who are RN's, Practioners, MDs, and plastic surgeons and they all aren't entirely fond of the hours, the grime work, etc that comes with it. Regardless, they do it because they're absolutely passionate about the medical field and helping people.
Most folks I know in the medical field aren't in it for the check and if they were, they wouldn't last more than a year.
Can you imagine some of these NTers having to touch male eggplant or cleaning up butt mud on a daily basis for $90K? They'd lose it
Yeah please don't join the medical field if you don't have a passion for it, people's lives are in your hands. My sis did a stint as a nursing professor, got frustrated due to the amount of adults who didn't really care and just want the answers.
And good stuff Malta, once I finish this grind I see myself on a similar trajectory, Director of Tech with some nice investments. Way in the back for now though.