Nursing or teaching degree?

[Mrsknackered]

I am really stuck deciding between the two.
I've always wanted to do something medical - for a while believed it was midwifery - but I'm leaning more towards nursing now with the possibility of specialising in neonatal in the future.
I think I'd be a 'good' teacher and obviously the hours are desirable but not sure if that's enough.
Any experiences of these degrees? Do you/did you enjoy? Did you go onto this profession after graduating?

DS1 will be in Reception when I'd start and DS2 will be 10 months.

I love nursing. You can switch h specialties whenever you like. It is so interesting. Lots of room for progression. Private or NHS. Primary care or hospital. Theatre, ward or community.

Nurse here...my thoughts....

Nursing is something you should have a strong desire to do to do it well. Experiencing the environment and role is essential before you potentially get into debt only to not like it (also same for teaching).

The course is HARD work (I qualified 10 years ago and still have vivid memories!), emotionally and physically incredibly draining, extreme highs and lows, academic work whilst working full time on a random shift basis, low pay in relation to qualification and responsibility. Due to this it does have a high drop out, burnout rate whilst studying and then when qualified. BUT - I wouldn't do anything else, I do get a huge amount of gratification from my job and feel privileged to share some of lifes most intimate moments with people.

My brother in law is a primary teacher, it is also a frustrating job requiring alot of patients and desire to teach. Parents seem to often be the most difficult part of the job along with the marking of work, inability to influence the curriculum and how its tought very much (state), and needless testing.

Try and put some feelers out for some experience to get a better idea x

I'm duel trained (paeds and adults) paeds IMO is better the ratio of children to trained staff is max 1:6 we have more time to actually care about the children. But my adult training has been invaluable.
Boj I think your right schools do look after their staff a mother of one of the children on my ward who was a teacher was telling me that every teacher chooses a "duvet day" once a year, her DH at another school has the same thing, frankly we get f**k all in the NHS we're not even allowed to have the ward milk for our tea or use the kitchen microwave or toaster (both are disciplinary offences). The NHS has a long history of treating its staff like crap, and the count your lucky stars you have a job sort of stuff it's not going change in my working life.
Despite the enormous staffing crisis our "return to practice" nurse student get given a £1000 as a "golden hello" when they finish the course, which takes 6 months, in contrast depending on your degree subject trainee teachers can get up to £27000 as a tax free bursary for a 1 year course, sums up the NHS's/government attitudes to nurses.

I think the other thing to remember is that with nursing you can be part time but the rota system can mean that you do a lot of hours within a short time frame.

I do 23 hours per week, but my rota over 5 days is a night shift on one day, a sleep day, then a day off and two long days in a row, so 35.75 hours over 5 days, with a flip from nights to days with just one clear day in between. But technically it's part of a two week rota, because the first long day is a Sunday and the second long day is a Monday. Likewise, full-time staff can find themselves doing long strings because they do the back end of one week and the front end of the next week. It doesn't always work neatly. Flipping from nights to days tough, too.

I'm also a student nurse OP. And a single parent (rock solid family help, thank god). If you're looking at paediatric nursing then it's the course I'm on that you'd be doing.

I do long shifts when I'm working on a ward. Some trusts keep it to just long shifts, won't give you 3 together unless you're on nights and chuck in a 4th every 4 weeks to make up the shortfall in hours. The trust I'm with currently work on the basis of 2 long shifts and 2 short (8 hour) shifts and think nothing of scheduling those shifts consecutively. This is harder for me and some weeks I ache to see DD, despite being as far from a clingy parent as it's possible to be. I'd say you need to be absolutely sure that you want to nurse if you're going into nursing. Things get tough very quickly and you need to have the conviction to get through those times.

If you have any questions about the actual course that might help your decision making, ask away.

I may be biased but radiography over nursing any day. I work mon-fri 9-5, no weekends or bank holidays although had to work shifts during my training.

i am currently in the same dilemma but it is as to when to go and do my training. Midwife is the goal and i know that is what will happen one day but on a selfish but not selfish at the same time note, i dont feel ready to give up christmas yet. As a healthcare worker before children i am more than familiar with the issues, but the thought of qualifying and doing what my mum did last year, which was night shift christmas eve and night shift christmas day, I realised that things that need little thought throughout the year are still no less as important as the day to day stuff, particularly when littlies are little.

To throw another idea into the pot, if you're interested in the science and wanting to help then how about healthcare research? I'm a trained health care professional and have specialised in research, but I work alongside a lot of academic researchers who aren't clinically qualified and the hours are reasonably family friendly.

I was in the same predicament as you a few years back. I knew I wanted to work with people so chose my A levels based on that. I was swayed towards teaching in the end; 'better money, better hours, more opportunities' (useless family advice based on no experience).

I started my primary school teaching degree but quit after 2 years. It just wasn't for me, I can't pinpoint why but I couldn't envisage it as a career for life. A year later I went back to university and trained to be a mental health nurse and it's the best thing I've ever done.

I now work at a secure forensic hospital and in the three years I've been qualified I've learnt so much. Mental health nursing might seem in a completely different league to what you want to do, but all branches of nursing require many of the same skills.

I work with a diverse bunch of patients. In one hour I might be managing and attempting to deescalate an acutely psychotic patient who is exhibiting aggressive and challenging behaviour. In another, I might be reassuring and supporting a suicidal patient who I've worked closely with to gain trust and build and maintain a therapeutic relationship. At other times I might have to physically restrain a patient who is self-harming and seclude them in order to maintain their own safety. At the other end of the scale, I might be working with a stabilised patient who is ready to be rehabilitated in the community but they require me to teach and support them in developing life skills.

All branches of nursing will require you to build strong relationships with patients and their families, risk assess, spot early warning signs to prevent risk of relapse, make clinical judgements, work autonomously, work with the multidisciplinary team, keep up to date with professional knowledge, use evidence based practice, teach patients (whether it be how to fry an egg or how to inject insulin independently), take some form of responsibility for teaching future nurses. Also you'll need a sound knowledge of medications your administering - what they're for, contraindications, maximum doses etc. Etc. I found all of this so much more interesting and rewarding than teaching. Nursing is an art as well as a science.

I also believe there are many pathways and opportunities for promotion in nursing - primary care, secondary care, community care and each will have their pros and cons in regards to flexibility, shift patterns and working hours. You'll also meet patients/service users from all walks of life.

Training is hard (long hours for no pay, exams, assignments presentations), but if it's something you really want to do you will get through it. It was definitely worth it for me. You have to make this decision for yourself, but one piece of advice from me is, don't base your decision on practicalities.

Do whatever you like then go to either Australia or Canada and use it.

Working 9-5 as a radiographer is a very rare thing, it's all shifts these days, and no easy job either . Dh is a teacher , double whammy here . Pick something you're passionate for.

As a nurse of over 25 years I wouldn't do it again. The pay is crap for the responsibility, and although unsocial hours might be fine now, believe me trying to juggle/find childcare while you work weekends, nights, bank holidays is a nightmare. IME they're aren't many different hours to suit you, you fit in with 'the needs of the service'. The NHS is extremely family unfriendly and inflexible unless you do agency work.
And only 5-6 weeks away from the workplace in the whole year.

Don't forget that you now have to pay tuition fees to train as a nurse! And the bursaries have gone.

I rented a room from a batshit crazy lady once who was an English teacher for grades 7 and 8. She claimed that she was very much bullied by the head teacher and a colleague who she was supposed to share a class with. I don't think this lady would have been easy to work with at all (the one I rented from), but she became so stressed out that she had to go to her GP and he prescribed her anxiety and depression medication and she was actually prescribed to take time off from the job. She basically quit mid year and never went back. She had been doing it something like 13 years or so.

It sounded very stressful indeed, but she was also a loon.