Right now, you are probably busy enquiring about nursing with various groups or searching online with terms such as ‘how to become a nurse in New Hampshire,’ but it is time to take a step back.
Nursing is not an easy job, and you need to do some serious self-analysis to determine whether you are actually prepared to take on this lifelong career path and whether your decision truly aligns with your interests and goals. These things encompass various aspects of your life, and it is only through this that you can make your future career meaningful and fulfilling.
Why are you interested in nursing?
Many would answer ‘because it pays well’ or that ‘it’s a stable career’. Of course, these are all true, but it is still a rather difficult and highly demanding job. It is important to extensively reflect on your reasons for pursuing the path of nursing. You may have a passion for caring for others and want to make a real difference in someone’s life; you may just have a knack for working in a team; or you probably have a big interest in healthcare and the medical field – these are motivations that you need to understand if you want to enter this field.
A survey conducted in 2012 in Queensland, Australia found that the two dominant themes of why nurses entered their respective fields were ‘opportunity for carrying’ and having a ‘vocation in life’. All nurses (and nursing students) were found to have very high traits of empathy and altruistic ideals regardless of their personalities, which also included more pragmatic and self-serving principles. Suppose you are still unsure about why you want to be a nurse, in that case, you can think about volunteering in healthcare institutions (such as the Red Cross) to have a better grasp of what exactly nurses do and whether it piques your interests.
Are you prepared for the emotional and physical demands?
Besides the academic demands, there are also emotional and physical requirements – there is no way around it. To put it bluntly, being a nurse is not for the faint-hearted. You will need to witness and be active in assisting patients going through painful illnesses, difficult treatment plans and diagnoses, as well as arduous recoveries, and even, dying processes.
Empathy and altruism are important foundations of nursing; however, you will also need willpower and a degree of toughness. The best nurses can withstand times of sorrow and difficulty while also celebrating tremendous joys and happiness, such as recovery. It is even more so for the physical demands. Registered nurses frequently walk or stand for long periods. There is the occasional heavy lifting and rapid movements when dealing with direct patient care. These demands can be great for pushing you to develop new skills and experience, but it can still be very tiring; according to a 2023 survey conducted by career resource platform, Zippie, around 55% of nurses experience burnout due to physical exhaustion.
You will obviously need to strike a balance between work and self-care, and with the sheer pace of things in this field, it is very easy to overdo things.
How well do you handle stress and pressure?
The effects of high emotional and physical demands are stress and pressure – and you will need to reflect on how well you can handle them, and whether improvements can be made. No job is stress-free, but nursing can have some very challenging moments. As a nurse, you will often see people at their worst. You may even take the brunt of the inevitable anger, frustration and even violence a patient might have with whatever condition or illness they are dealing with. Moreover, irregular work schedules can be a factor in anxiety too.
Contrarily, of course, there are many rewards for weathering these storms as a nurse; respect is a key one. Many people highly regard nurses for being able to know their patients on a highly intimate level while assisting them through either the best or worst times of their lives. While the majority of healthcare institutions provide training on how to handle these unpleasant situations, having an idea of your window of tolerance can go miles in building resilience.
What are your long-term career goals?
What do you want to get out of a career in nursing? For example, learning for nurses does not just end with completing your nursing degree and license, so you might have the goal of being a lifelong learner through this pathway; the field requires you to maintain current skills while learning new ones throughout your career.
You may have other goals such as wanting to pursue a specialisation or even look for opportunities to work abroad with nursing opportunities found overseas. Finding and having these goals in mind can ensure that your nursing career has a concrete purpose – or, it can help you discover it too. Recognising them will make sure that this path is aligned with your values as well as pave opportunities for professional development.
Ultimately, goal setting has been proven to increase employee satisfaction, so reflecting and creating them is highly encouraged.
Are you ready for the required education and licensing exams?
Finally, nursing school is quite competitive, so you should be prepared for any required academic endeavours. Academic prerequisites often include anatomy, physiology, biology, microbiology, pharmacology, chemistry, English Composition, psychology, nutrition, statistics and various other areas. There are also many different types of nursing degrees: Associate Degree in Nursing, Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing, Master’s Degree in Nursing and Doctoral Degree in Nursing, all of which you will need to decide upon.
Depending on the institution you choose, you may need to take the Health Education Systems Incorporated (HESI) exam, which helps nurses prepare for their licensure exams but is used by many colleges as an admissions assessment. Subsequently, after completing your nursing degree, to obtain a Registered Nurse accreditation, you will usually need to take the NCLEX licensure test to prove your competence for the healthcare institutions you wish to work at.
Clearly, it is not easy and you must be sure that you will be committed (and willing) to place completing these academic prerequisites as your top priority to guarantee yourself a place in your chosen program; in addition, to maintaining good grades and having the experience to have a competitive edge over other nursing job applicants.
