Is nursing/midwifery a good career choice?

[overthinkersanonnymus]

Off the back of another post on the mature study section, please could some nurses or midwives give us some insight in to what your day to day/ week looks like?

And maybe what you like and struggle with in your role? Would you recommend it as a career?

Thanks!

@shouldIRetrain just tagging you in this as it may help us out!

14 years as a nurse. Definitely would not recommend!I mean I love my service users but the amount of pressure that's put on us on the daily is mental.
Everyday is a fight with staff, gps....just about everyone!
The rate of pay isn't reflective of what we do!

.

No I was a nurse for 20 years and got completely burnt out and physically wrecked.
I gave up and retrained as a podiatrist in my mid 40s. 9 to 5 weekends off and a social life.
You can get a band 6 guaranteed in a year and band 7 the year after that.
I wish I'd done this instead of nursing.

Sorry, not sure what happened there !

I'm a nurse. It's been a rocky journey particularly with children to sort when I was newly qualified.

It's not paid enough for the decisions and responsibility. However there is no job out there so flexible in my opinion. I've done lots of different specialities, from surgical wards to medical wards. District nursing, A&E, and now commissioning. Just go in with your eyes open.

Nurse here - absolutely not! It’s awful. Both mentally and physically. I’m a disability assessor now and will never go back to clinical nursing

Oh crikey!

@Gettingbysomehow @Greenbottle123 daft question, but did your nursing degree/background enable you to move into the jobs you're in now?

Yes you need a relevant healthcare degree and two years experience to do my job

Yeah, I needed my degree, and lots of clinical experience to get my role now. I think a Masters will become the norm as well in nursing.

do not recommend at present. The pressure is horrendous and management do not help the situation

I've been a nurse since 2005. It's changed a lot, especially in the last 10 years or so. Would I do it again if I had my time over? I really don't know. I feel like I've been very privileged to do this job in some ways. It's not easy, but I've met some really great and interesting people along the way (both patients and colleagues). I wouldn't, however, encourage my children to follow in my footsteps. There is so much demand on the service that it's unrealistic. That said, it can be a rewarding job. Sorry, OP, I don't know if this is a lot of help. That said, I'm still there, and I don't dread going to work every day. I can't see me still here when I'm 68, though!

I love it, glad I work in a specialised area though as the limited experience I had with wards during training was definitely not for me.

The staffing where I work is good, we work 3 or 4 12.5 hr shifts a week and there is pretty good flexibility.
Every day looks different and there are lots of opportunities for development and advancement and the whole team is really supportive. At band 5 level the responsibility is good and not overwhelming
If you find the right place to work it can be amazing and its a useful degree even if you want to move on to something else.

Look at all the threads on here about financially struggling. This is the moment you decide whether you’re going to live like that or not.

Midwife.
I love my job but god am I exhausted.
Working Xmas, being constantly slagged off in the press, feeling like you don't have time to do what you need to do. Its tough. Would I do it again? Not sure.

Nurse here.

Trained before children though. Uni was full on, but I'm not sure if that would be the same now / if you are doing a longer course / diploma as opposed to degree etc.

Went to work in a hospital when I qualified. Left after a year and went to Australia to renovate houses and basically do anything other than nursing.

Whilst in Oz realised that I didn't want to waste my training, but also didn't want to ever going back to working in a hospital. So came home, got a job in a GP surgery. Good job, but full on and intense.

After 5 years there I spotted an advert for a respiratory specialist nurse. Applied without all their desired qualifications, but managed to get the job. It's for a private company where we have our own "case load" of GP surgeries and run specialist clinics for asthma & COPD patients. Love the job. Flexible, rewarding and well paid. Fully employed but often go for days without being hassled by management. It's a perfect balance.

Have done this job for 10 years now and don't see me ever leaving.

Hospital - shit shifts / missing important dates / burn out.

Practice nurse - nice job and variation but too many duties and too little time.

My job now - perfect in every way.

I would say do it but keep a very open mind about what you do and don't like and what is important to you and you'll find your perfect job!

I work as a CNS and run my own service. My trust has no money, my team has shrunk by 50% and the pressure is beyond high. Waiting times for investigations and intervention/surgery are long which is extremely worrying and stressful for patients and clinicians alike. But, I don’t think I could do anything else. I love being a nurse. And I’m lucky that I have some flexibility that allows me to somehow manage my work and young family. It’s hard, I wear too many hats but it’s also rewarding. Wouldn’t want to be a band 5 ward nurse again though, I didn’t enjoy it all those years ago and moved away from that as soon as I could. I ended up in a cardiac cath lab which to this day is the most interesting and rewarding job I’ve ever done. Again - bloody hard, long hours and working 24hr on-call but as part of the job I got to be a scrub nurse, resuscitation and advanced life support provider, in essence a cardiac A&E nurse, anaesthetic recovery nurse, you name it..and it was AWESOME. I miss it but my back is buggered from wearing leads for years so had to pivot. All in all, mixed bag but rarely boring! Agree with other posters, managers often suck.

Nurse for 27 yrs, and counting!
It is stressful, physically and mentally exhausting. Shifts are usually long and very hard work. You miss holidays and you def don't get paid what you are worth.
Having said that the pay is actually pretty good. I've managed to support myself and pay off a mortgage working just 2 nights a week for nost of my career. Also youget plenty of annual leave and a really decent pension scheme.
There are worse jobs!

Pre degree or diploma , nurse first then midwife. It has given me choice in where I live not extravagant but mine. I did 36 yrs, then got ill was lucky enough to be able to retire. Worked least 25 Christmas days. Bullied by management. Worked in hospital for most of my career. not sure I would do it again.

💯 yes it's a great career choice there is so much choice! Specialist nurses, breastfeeding experts all sorts. I qualified as a mature student and I now teach on a healthcare course

I did Access to Nursing course a few years back. Not many of the people I met on my course are still in nursing. Many have radically different jobs now (truck driver is one example).
The ones still in nursing went into community stuff. One is now a diabetes nurse. A lot less stress.

I mostly love nursing.
I work full time nights, works round the kids and boosts my hourly wage by 30%.
It can be stressful, long hours, everywhere is understaffed.
I work community nights which is mainly palliative care. I really enjoy looking after my poorly palliatives and their families. Will hopefully end up in hospice.

The stress is awful, and the public are horrible so much of the time. I’ve been spat on, sworn at, slapped and had death threats.

It’s very diverse, lots of different jobs. An ok wage if you live somewhere most people earn minimum wage, terrible for the responsibility if you are in an expensive area -especially a city.

If you’re ambitious you can get to corporate jobs fairly easily if you get a masters and do the correct route, plus live in a big city. Some chief nurses take home £150k. If you want to stay clinical you will probably top out at £60k ish but in some areas opportunities to progress are few as no one moves on.

The easiest most controlled workloads I’ve known are in niche areas such as research. Hospital and community nursing is generally understaffed and massively stressful. It’s a unique profession in that its boundaries have never been clearly defined and any work others don’t want to do gets piled onto nurses. It’s also very misunderstood by the public until they become seriously unwell. It’s now highly skilled and safety critical but many don’t understand that.

if I went back in time I wouldn’t do it again. On the flip side I think it’s the job that makes the greatest impact difference on a patients experience of hospital.

No. In a nutshell.

Going against the grain here, but I trained in my 40s and for the most part loved it! I met some amazing people, both patients and staff. In the end ward nursing got a bit much for me and I am now a clinical nurse specialist which involves doing outpatient clinics, and a lot of office work so very different to the ward. I do miss the patient contact and maybe I was lucky but we had a great team on the ward and supportive manager. But my current role suits me better, with office hours and no weekends. As another poster mentioned, there are so many different roles within nursing, it's not all on the ward. My ward did long days which were very tiring but it meant that to work full time you did three days or nights a week, and a fourth once a month so we did get a decent amount of non-working days. It's not a job I would have enjoyed if I'd been younger though. I think having some life experience does help, although the younger nurses I knew were amazing at the job