Going into nursing at 38. Crazy?

[Spotify]

Morning.
I'm seriously considering changing careers. I'm 38 and have 3 kids.
I did a BA in 2004 and since then have worked mostly in TEFL and in schools. (though not a qualified mainstream teacher).
I took time out when I had my kids and had to give up TEFL as I couldn't get around much and there were no opportunities for me in the area.
I started working again after me and H split and have been working as a TA. I earn less now than I did 12 years ago and don't feel there is any pathway for me to move forward.
(I do not want to be a mainstream teacher!).
I feel my BA is totally useless to me now and need something that will guarantee me work after.

I'm looking into funding options at the moment and whether I'll be accepted onto a course.

My family are mostly medics, so I grew up with that around me. My sister has nursed all her working life but has just completed her degree which was made compulsory. I work in SEN so also have some experience of epilepsy, giving meds and feeding etc.

Has anyone taken such a huge step, Is it possible or am I just having a mid life crisis?

anyone :)

Yeah I retrained in my 30s. It was 4 years here. I had funding.

It was pretty doable in terms of the work, basically 50% in lectures and 50% on the wards. Obviously it was stressful when you were working on a big essay or at exam time but that's to be expected. And working as a student on the wards is hard, you have to do nights, weekends, the whole lot.

I will say that I had no kids at the time. If you have kids you need a strong support system as you will needs them minded at odd hours. There were mature parents on my course but they either had partners who were SAHP or had very very obliging mothers who did a hell of a lot for them.

If you think you're too old - you aren't. When you get to 48 or 58 or 68, you'll realise how young 38 actually is.

I think you can do a shortened 2 yr course if you already have a degree?

A friend of a friend was working as an HCA, she is 45 and has started training as a Nursing Associate.

Your certainly not too old to do your training. I qualified when I was 22. There were plenty of mature students on my course. They always appeared to be far more organised than the younger ones on the course, often because they had children so didn't have a lot of choice. As you probably know from your sister nursing is a very hard profession although very rewarding at times. As long as you have a good support network in regards to your child care you should be okay. Obviously you need to take in to account shift patterns when on placements etc. I'm in my mid 30 s and work with lots of 'older' nurses who have not long qualified and lots of our HCA are older than me and are due to start their training in the next couple of months. You're not too old at all. You could work for the next 20+ years so if it's what you really want to do do it.

Thank you for your supportive comments. I do have 3 children who are all in school. I hadn't thought about the shift work. Good point! That could be a sticking point over nights.

I will add that it is a proper trade in that once qualified there are a lot of options and a lot of paths to take.

I work part time and never nights or weekends. So nursing is very family friendly for us.

That's what I need Elspeth. I am determined and I need to know there are options to move forward which is what I don't have now.
How regular would night shifts be on the training approx?
My mum is quite good but this will have an impact on where I study.

When you are on a ward placement, could be 6 weeks long or a few months long, you will be paired with a ‘mentor’ nurse, and you work the shifts they work. So starting (roughly) 7.45 am and finishing at 4.30, or 7.45-9.15 (roughly) or starting 12.30-9 , maybe a half day. Some wards rotate staff every 6 weeks or so on to nights for a week or two, so you would do 3-4 nights a week (12 hour shift roughly).
Could be weekends, you could have a ten day stretch of shifts and then a few days off...there is no pattern.
You are definitely not too old, nursing is a brilliant job (IMO), but you will need solid childcare.

There would be no pattern to the nights. I mean, you could always say "I can't do nights that week" and they should be fairly OK with it (as long as you have enough time with your mentor otherwise) but it will be random.

That said you would not be expected to do nights every week. Or even every second week. Some nurses do a hell of a lot of nights as they pay more, but students don't.

And nights would usually be in a block of a few at a time. Our nights was 7.30pm to 8.30am.

I actually got lucky and only did nights about 3 times in my training. But others got quite unlucky and seemed to do them in every placement.

Depends on the uni, some do block placements and others do intergrated placement where you do uni and placement in the same week. Shift work also depends on the uni, I’ve heard of some that barely do night shifts, others it’s a lot more common.

Thanks Elspeth. If nights are not on a 'weekly' basis I think it could work if my mum is close like now. Do you have any choice in which placements you take/get?

Thanks Blue Cookie, it would be Bristol or Cardiff I'm thinking of.

I didn't, no. I think they have to be fair about it.

I do suspect that if you have 3 kids and are a LP they wouldn't be asking you to do nights that often, tbh.

Elspeth, is there a great degree of maths in it as I am really not great at this. :(
I'm fine with the Sciences and English just rubbish at Maths!

Retrained as a midwife in my 30s and despite the stress and challenges, have never looked back.

Foster mother retrained as a nurse at 48 and is fantastic at it.

As others have said though, it can a juggling act with childcare so I’d imagine you need good family support.

Not a nurse, but work alongside plenty. 38 is in no way too old. However I would add that it's obviously a physically demanding job with long and variable shifts. If were going into nursing at that age, from the outset I would have half an eye on building my training/CPD/experience towards a community/outpatient role as I got older.

I am a nurse, and I was also going to say you are definitely not too old, we regularly have students on the ward who are older, but the shift patterns and childcare might be an issue on placements. I went straight from sixth form to university to do nursing and I found it hard. Now that I have DC I am genuinely in awe of the students who are combining a nursing degree and bringing up a family. On my ward the students often only get their shifts a week or two before the placement starts, which would probably make it difficult to sort out childcare at such short notice. Each student gets 2 mentors, and the shifts are worked out so they work with those mentors as much as possible but also to avoid having 6 students on at once, so, to an extent, my student has to follow my crappy shift pattern (I sometimes feel bad for my student when I am working loads of weekends in a row for example). We can usually accomodate occasional requests to swap a shift for childcare reasons but not many. I don't want to put you off nursing if it is what you want to do, but you do need to make sure you have robust plans in place, as not many childcare providers are open early enough for you to drop off before starting a placement at 7.30am, depending on how far away the placement is from home, and you will need someone to look after DC until after 9pm and for night shifts and weekends (our students do sometimes end up doing a couple of nights every 2-3 weeks because that is what the nurses do, it is unusual for me to go more than 2 weeks without working a night shift).
Our shifts are 7.30am - 3.30pm, 12.30-8.30pm, or more usually long days 7.30am - 8.30pm (I don't usually see my DC on a work day) and 8pm - 8am to give you an idea of what times to expect.
The other thing that I thought from reading your OP is that you don't mention any experience of working/ volunteering in healthcare. You would probably need this to successfully apply for a nursing degree. I think you might need to have done some recent academic study too if you haven't done any since 2004, check that with your local universities.
Good luck.

Physiology is the hardest. That is shit. And you have to keep on top of the biochemistry. It's not so much that they're maths based as highly technical.

You just have to take them seriously and not miss any of those lectures. Whereas you can miss a lecture in Law, for instance, and understand it fine from the notes.

But I can't do any maths and never did biology or chemistry in school and I got on fine. You just have to keep on top of it and ask your classmates if you get a bit lost.

And if in doubt, there's always a You Tube video made by some American randomer 5 years ago that explains it really well!

BTW I work in an outpatients type setting. That's where the family friendly roles are. Private as well as public hospitals.

It took a long time to type my reply, and you have asked more questions: where I am (not Bristol or Cardiff), you don't get any choice in placements until the final year where currently one of the universities that our students come from gives them a bit of choice, and being a LP with 3 DC wouldn't necessarily mean you get to do less nights. The ward gets a list of student names and the nurse with responsibility for student off-duty allocates each one 2 mentors and works out their shifts based on what those mentors are doing. We wouldn't know who had DC etc until you started and may not be able to accomodate requests to not do many nights because otherwise we end of with 6 students on a day shift which wouldn't give enough nurses for each to work with. Again, I am not trying to put you off but you need to know what the reality could be.

I'm in NI and the students here have to pass a maths exam every year and if the fail they they one chance to resit or they are booted out!
It's outrageous.

I believe you are expected to be able to do GCSE level maths to get on the course. There are maths tests during the course, but I think they let you use a calculator.