To want to change careers from nursing into teaching for better work life balance

[TwinklyRoseTurtle]

I’m aware both are highly stressful careers, I’m quite senior in my role and would be taking roughly a 15K pay cut. However it keeps niggling in the back of mind, from posts I’ve seen this on previously I’ve seen it commented that teaching means taking work home- in my nursing role this is also very common- you never switch off even on days off. I’m finding the shift work increasingly difficult but not just that, I still like helping people it’s my favourite part of the job but I just feel like nursing is not for me anymore, I’ve still got a long career ahead of me and can’t deny the fact I would prefer Monday- Friday hours and all half terms off for childcare also. I’m interested in hearing from anyone else who has done this? Is it an unrealistic expectation for work/life balance?

Probably science as degree related.

We have the same problem in nursing except it’s relatives, it’s something that is getting worse, likely as is the same for teachers- I wonder if it’s just public sector working - thank you for all the replies I’m just catching up and now looking at other possible careers 🤣

@TwinklyRoseTurtle secondary school teaching is around 10 to 11 hours per day you work term time. I do 4 days a week and do at least 40 hours a week term time.

It is NOT a job for work life balance but you do get 13 weeks holiday.

Its currently half term and I have 4 class sets of tests to mark, Y12 homework to mark (class of 24 so thats about 4 hours), planning for week back and various other admin tasks.

Its an exhausting job.

Oh lovely, I didn’t want to read and not add anything. I don’t think people who aren’t in nursing/ midwifery/ paramedic/ medicine realise the stress of being in life and death situations. Living that day in, day out takes its toll mentally and physically.
Not only life/ death scenarios, but the other stuff that goes on in wards - the complaints, patients falls, Datix reporting, targets, upset staff, poor staffing when you literally have no one to give out medication so you end up doing them all. Been there, done that. I’ve tried wards, community, commissioning, the latter paid very very well. However, you still have the same pressures. Worry, anxiety and overall sadness. I hear you.
No one gets it until you work in it. I have no advice to give you about your next steps but I send you a hug from a fellow nurse xxxx

I totally get wanting to leave a profession. After a long time you can get jaded and have simply had enough.

I was the same with teaching.
I was physically assaulted and put in hospital which required 2 operations (I know this is more an extreme story compared to others). HOWEVER in the city I am in I don't know a single teacher who hasnt been physically or verbally abused and you are somewhat powerless and you have to teach them again!

Out of fire into frying pan. I'd maybe look into non public facing role. I can imagine a social worker, nurse police officer all have the same amount of stress and the same amount of people wanting to leave.

I can definitely understand your desire to leave nursing, once your spark has gone out the day to day drudge is unreal.

Honestly, I think teaching is jumping out of the frying pan straight into a bloody red hot fire. The situation will be the same, under staffed under appreciated, under funded. Relatives will be swapped for parents. Audits and reports exchanged for marking and prepping. Nothing short of your soul will be expected, just like nursing.

If you have the funds/opportunity to retrain why not look away from public services.

I like the idea of moving into a Human Resources role.

I know you don’t like the idea of staying in nursing but I’m flirting with retaining in occupational health and moving towards the private sector. If I don’t like it, at least they might buy us a drink at the Christmas party instead of having to pay £45 for a ticket to attend :)

Good luck whatever you decide.

This

I agree. The only plus is you won't have formal shift work, but you will take work home. Younwill probably be off at the same time of any children you may hsve. It is extremely inflexible re being available during the working day for child appointments' etc. The discipline issues can be taxing.

Hmmmm, as a teacher I think the work/life balance in your favour only comes after a good few years in the job, with experience and knowing which corners to cut/what to prioritise. That and finding a good, supportive, realistic school, and coming to terms with the fact that you can’t do everything asked of you unless you work 24/7.
So I would be nervous to go into teaching if you’re looking for a good work/life balance! The holidays don’t really count unless you only want the balance for 13 weeks of the year.

Hmmmm, as a teacher I think the work/life balance in your favour only comes after a good few years in the job, with experience and knowing which corners to cut/what to prioritise. That and finding a good, supportive, realistic school, and coming to terms with the fact that you can’t do everything asked of you unless you work 24/7.
So I would be nervous to go into teaching if you’re looking for a good work/life balance! The holidays don’t really count unless you only want the balance for 13 weeks of the year.

I think you would need to improve your subject knowledge with a SKE qualification

I think you would be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Best to carry on looking for a different career, as you say.

I'm a teacher.

The best thing you could do is ask to volunteer in a school in the department you want to work in. Do that first and then consider teaching. I'm not going to say go for it, don't do it but it can be extremely rewarding at the same time, extremely difficult. The work life balance all comes down to the school. Someone above said working 10-11 hour days which is absurd, yes it can happen but not every day! The PGCE year was my hardest year as I did the school direct route, I did have young children at the time though. Would I give your job up for teaching? Probably not. It's just as demanding and stressful just in different ways.
I did want to be a midwife!

My dh had a couple of ex doctors as trainee teachers and neither could hack it.

I did it! Am now an FE lecturer teaching health and social care. The holidays are great and my heaviest work days are 9-4 I did take a pay cut to begin with but now earn roughly band 7 wages

I get nursing is stressful but teaching can be. Thetre is more autonomy in teaching and it's a lot better paid than nursing but I don't think you'd find you have a better balance for at least 5 years.

OP do you have the aptitude for teaching children?

It always surprises me when people change career and often decide on teaching. I see teaching at schools as a specialist skill which requires a unique set of personality traits and expertise. I am a hospital doctor and teach medical students. But there is no way I have the personality or skills to cope with large groups of children of various ages! Esp the ones who don’t want to be there. I think it’s a bit arrogant to think you (general) can just change career to be a teacher, but so many people think they can…

Teachers don’t get much time off at weekends. And the initial years are incredibly tough.

I taught in higher ed for 25 years. I could be marking 200 bits of work a week and each takes thought and time.

Then preparing lessons. I worked 7 days a week for most weeks of the year.

I know lots of nurses and paramedics who have moved into teaching, they all love it.

Their work life balance is better and their mental health has improved. I don’t think people are always aware that there are several jobs outside of teaching that also include the same if not more struggles.

It probably depends what aspect of work/life balance is the problem. I think there’s a lot of people answering here who’ve never worked 12hr + night shifts or every Christmas for a decade…….

Stopping night shift is a major major improvement to everyone’s mental health. Being with your family during holiday periods or not constantly worrying that a mistake with a decimal point can kill a child are also good things. If dealing with the public, working > 40 hours a week, not getting paid for the hours you work or being complained about/spat on/bitten/sexually assaulted at work etc is the issue that may not be any better unfortunately.

I did it.
I had 30 years of nursing experience I was highly regarded by my colleagues, have a reputation for being at best exceedingly hard working others would say I’m a workaholic and a perfectionist driven by an almost obsessive desire to give the best patient care. My appraisals frequently commented on my outstanding abilities as a nurse and my vast knowledge in my area my adaptability my can do attitude. But or maybe I should say inevitably I was completely burnt out and my physical health was being significantly affected because I worked in a system that was (and is) not putting the patient and their families etc first I (and my colleagues) from all disciplines are not giving the care we want too.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks and what we as HCPs do what the essence of the job is all about and what IME most NHS staff believe it’s all about; high quality about free health care to all regardless of who you are is written through me and most of my colleagues like a stick of seaside rock. There are many many issues in the NHS but most HCP are pulling in the same direction. There is a camaraderie, the going above and beyond that most people saw and clapped for during Covid happens every minute of every day just on a smaller and of course unacknowledged scale. I’m perfectly aware that there are huge issues but the reason why so many of us return shift after shift is that when it works we do make a massive difference to people usually at the worst times in their lives. Stay with me this is relevant.
But like you OP I just wanted to leave so I applied and easily got a place training to be a teacher and got a huge bursary.
Within 2-3 days I knew I’d done the wrong thing I think it would be fair to say I hated it. I felt like a Martian who’d landed on another planet and I did not understand this planet. HCPs and teachers do not share the same ethos. I don’t really know where to begin so here is my experience in no particular order of priority.

1. For teachers respect is very important, they expect to be respected by pupils and parents we were frequently told that how we present ourselves, from the way we dress men in suits women smartly dressed in skirts dresses etc to how we behave out of work one teacher advised us not to sit in a pub garden drinking a beer near our school (just add I don’t go to pubs) is important. When I said respect in my extensive experience is earned and what you wear and what you do outside of work is largely irrelevant, gone are the days of pin strip suit clad consultant they were incredulous.
2. Teachers never stop moaning about how hard they work, how early they start, how late they finish, how they work through all their holidays weekends how they get paid pro rata (don’t we all in the public sector) how they never take their breaks. This is a myth at best. They live and work in an echo chamber this is all they talk about so therefore it must be true. Yes they work hard but IME so do millions of people in all walks of life. I’m not going to say much more but I closely observed what was going on in a variety of schools.
3. you think nurses don’t support each other teachers definitely don’t. They have this thing called the SLT they go round looking at what you’re doing and try to find things your doing badly. This is what adds a huge burden to their work load.
4. For me who’s used to a very fast and ever changing situation not knowing from one minute to the next what’s going to happen next, I’m used to having to think very quickly on feet when often peoples lives are literally at risk make complicated and difficult decisions in seconds and not have any sort of predictable day I found teaching as boring as hell.
5. as HCPs we form 1:1 relationships with the patients we meet, it might only be for 20 minutes or years this is part what I believe brings us back day after day, we are literally being paid to care for strangers to use not just our knowledge our abilities to care for patients to improve their outcomes whether it be to make people better or to aid a peaceful death. I realised when teaching this is pretty unique teachers usually have a class of 30 they have a heavily prescribed curriculum, they are through no fault of the individual teacher driven by need to improve exam results above anything else regardless of whether or not it’s in a individual child’s best interest this means that you can’t have the sort of 1:1 relationship that HCPs have.
6. the curriculum for your subject will be very prescribed as one teaching said to me gone are the days when you can’t go “off piste” frankly in my subject I thought it was a boring as hell. I used to observe lessons the kids looked bored and I was bored.

@TwinklyRoseTurtle my advise don’t do it. Only 15% of those who started the training are still teaching the majority were coming from other professions, over 70% dropped out during the training . Interestingly those who struck it out were the ones who’d come straight out of university who knew nothing else. The NHS is not a perfect place to work we are chronically underfunded (like education) their are multiple staffing issues from lack of staff to bullying, those who even raise the smallest concern let alone full on whistle blowing are at best unpopular with colleagues and management at worst discriminated against for the rest of their careers. We put up with huge levels of physical and emotional abuse support from management is at best sketchy. Patients and their families often have totally unreasonable expectations and so many don’t seem to be even able to treat the simplest of illnesses themselves yes you can take analgesia for a simple sprain. But at people most vulnerable times in their lives we as NHS workers step up to the plate and in most cases work as a team, over the years I have resuscitated small babies, been part of a major trauma teams, held the hand of a dying child, a young adult and elderly grand mother I’ve celebrated with those who’ve done their 5 year cancer journey and are free of cancer laughed with the elderly, cried with bereaved families, I’ve contracted head lice, been punched pushed and had a knife waived in my face and hidden from patients throwing furniture around. I’ve been bullied by colleagues and supported by them. And I keep coming back now 40 years in, despite the multiple difficulties I care deeply about the people I look after I form 1:1 relationships with them and in most cases make a tangible difference to them as do the vast majority of my colleagues. In teaching you can probably earn more money we know most nurses are still in the band they started on at qualifying but when it works you will never get the same job satisfaction as you will get in the NHS. I came back to the NHS of course welcomed back with open arms I’d returned to my family warts and all but I understood this family. Do PM me if you want more info about the training I did.

I don’t want to do another nursing job, I’ve done both acute/ community and I just want a job that’s not life and death anymore honestly

I have an acquaintance who swapped from community nursing to a school vaccination nurse. It was an earlier start as she had to go to some centralised location to pick up the jabs and outreach morning then drive to the school, but was all over by lunch, then would drop coolboxes back and the day was over. Then she would enter all the student vax records into central system on non school days. She didn’t work school hols. It really wasn’t a life or death job. Have you considered stuff like this?

You could try getting a job with the Care Quality Commission? I think they may have jobs with standard Mon-Fri hours for which a nursing background is suitable. Sorry, off subject a bit, nothing to do with teaching.

I would say about the hours-I often did 10/11 hours in school as a teacher-arrived at 7.15, left at 6. My
nurse friend did very long days as well (11/12h shifts), but seemed to only do 3 of them to be full time.

I’ve been teaching 26 years and go through periods of loving and hating it and I don’t hate it enough to leave. At nearly 48 I’m too exhausted to think about retraining.

I would recommend work experience. It will give you a behind the scenes picture, although watching an experienced teacher navigate their day makes the job look “easy”. We have PGCE students each year and I only know of 3 who stayed throughout the course and 1 who stayed in teaching. We currently have had a 31 year old student before her timetable began she was required to just teach starters. She didn’t return after that week and I like to think we are a very supportive department and the class teacher had planned the lesson - she just needed to deliver it. She said being in front of 32 teenagers frightened her.

In terms of work life balance teachers have a clause in contracts that don’t specify a working week. There is obviously numbers of days in school and 1265 directed hours but there’s also a clause that is worded something along the lines of “tasks that must be completed to fulfil your duty” and depending on the school this can be abused. I teach revision classes in the Easter holidays and Whitsun as my school says this is what is needed to fulfil my role as a teacher - just one example and I don’t think I’m unique.

Edit - found the clause: Beyond directed time, the STPCD states that teachers must work ‘such additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of their professional duties’. As it’s so woolly, it’s open to abuse.