Total career change - nursing

[hypermum1]

Hi. Does anyone have experience of changing careers after children and going in to nursing? I have always wanted to do nursing, midwifery actually, but made some stupid decisions when younger and have ended up doing various sales jobs. I am currently working part time in my husbands business but I am so bored. I am not really interested in the work and feel totally unfulfilled. I am considering the option of nursing, however, I could not afford to not earn and have to pay to study whilst training so am looking at a Healthcare assistant role with a view to going on to study within the work place (hopefully paid for by my employer). Does anyone have experience of this at all?

look into nursing, I love it! There may be grants / bursaries around to help you study f/t. also you can join hospital bank or agency to work casual shifts as health care worker. Good luck!

Nursing tuition fees are paid by the NHS so you won't have to pay to study. You also get a bursary - not enough to live on but fairly generous nonetheless, IMO. (I'm a career-changing student midwife.) You say you're actually interested in midwifery - any particular reason you're considering going down the nursing route first? Midwifery is indeed very, very competitive but nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Thanks both. Bue, I was under the impression you had to do nursing training initially then go down the midwifery route? I am so confused! I cant seem to get any information from anywhere either as to what I need to do or where to start! I wanted to go and sit down with someone in my local hospital and go over my options, look at volunteering for a while first but have no idea where to start!!

Also, Bue sorry, what career did you change from? And well done for taking the plunge! Did you have a supportive other half?

You can train as midwife only nowadays.
have a look at these websites nmc
and nhs careers

I am a nurse in the community and love my job , very different to midwifery though. Apologies if you've already searched those sites.

If you get a job as a Healthcare Assistant first usually employers require you work for at least 2 years before being seconded, and that all depends on budgets and maybe even a proviso you go back and work for them when you're qualified. You probably wouldn't get placed as a student nurse on the same ward as you will do many different placements in different hospitals/community to gain a wide range of skills.

I worked part time as an HCA on a hospital bank/pool whilst I did my nurse training. It was hard work but at least it paid the mortgage, but I did not have kids then, I would work weekends and nights as much as possible.

There are so many different areas of nursing you can train in, I started off doing Adult Nursing then did Children's. Have a look on the NHS careers website, you can choose to do Midwifery, Adult, Children, Learning Disability or Mental Health Nursing as a diploma or degree dependent on which University you choose to study at. Then there are so many opportunities to specialise in something after you've gained experience post registration.

Good luck!

Hi hypermum - there's been direct entry midwifery in the UK for 20 years now! You can do the 18 month conversion course after nursing, but if you know you want to be a midwife then it makes much more sense to do the midwifery degree, to my mind. As I said, it's very competitive, but someone needs to get in! What educational quals do you have? I have a previous degree but a lot of mature students have done an Access to Nursing and Midwifery course. Any kind of related maternity / caring work or volunteering is also a good idea (though I didn't do any).

I worked in book publishing before starting the degree. And yes, I have a very supportive DH. He retrained as a teacher 2 years ago so knows what it is like!

It's a tough job and it's not for everyone. I would really, really recommend being a Healthcare Assistant because then you get to know whether you really want to be a nurse/midwife. Quite a few people didn't last more than the first couple of months - sometimes weeks, even days - of training when I did my nurse training (back in the day). You will also start nurse training with the head start of having a bit of experience which will make a difference to your confidence. Try to get work in a good ward, not somewhere where you will learn bad practices

As of next September nursing and midwifery students will only get a £1000 grant and a means-tested bursary of between £3,350 and £5,460.

In the NHS Trust I work for there is a freeze on secondment due to financial difficulties so training on the job isn't an option.

OP, you definitely should work on a ward before making up your mind. I also recommend reading nursing magazines, like Nursing Standard.

Midwifery is very different to nursing. I think if you want to do midwifery you should do it direct, the eighteen month courses are always being threatened with being stopped due to funding. Itd be awful if you just finished nurse training to find there weren't anymore conversion courses.

I trained as a midwife in my late 20s, went from an office job to doing it. No healthcare experience at all. I didn't realise how competitive it is or I think it would have put me off.

I really don't think I'd like hospital nursing, ward work type nursing. Had to do four weeks on a general ward and really didn't like it. But with nursing once you've done your training there is more scope to do different things, change areas, etc. Specialist nursing posts, gp surgery, a&e. With midwifery you've basically got a choice of hospital or community, there aren't many specialist roles. Im beginning to get a bit bored with it now.

these days most hospitals are only hiring HCAs who have previous experience or an apprenticeship, its gone from hospitals begging for HCA and hiring anyone who would do it, to being very competitive! most get nursing home experience for a year or two before getting a hospital job and doing their NVQ there. Go to your local uni's open days to find out about nursing and your local college's open days to find out about apprenticeships and NVQs

how flexible can you be? do you have family child care? day shifts can start at 7 and some finish as late as 10 then there's weekends and nights too. You are unlikely to get a foot in the door unless you are willing to be very flexible on shift patterns at least in the start while you are getting experience, or if you do nurse training while you are on placements

grumpleskilskin, what's going on where you live?! My Trust has traditionally been pretty desparate for HCAs and had a big recruitment drive a couple of times a year (whether that will continue now they're in financial hot water remains to be seen). I work alongside former warehouse staff, hairdressers, graduates with no previous work experience, all sorts. The thing is at interview to demonstrate a caring attitude and willingness to get your hands dirty.

Viva, nursing maybe looks more varied than midwifery but unfortunately there are lots of nurses competing for jobs. In my Trust newly qualified nurses just apply for a job, not a specific job, then if successful are assigned to a ward. They get no say in where they go. As a HCA I'm based on a neurology ward but sometimes get moved if there are staff shortages (as do the staff nurses). I dread being moved, especially if it's to one of the general medical wards as these are chronically under-staffed, ridiculously busy and you're not able to look after the patients properly. Basically, you may not have much control over your career, in the early years at least. You've got to enjoy nursing generally. Once you have experience then you can start applying for specialist roles.

By the way, before the bursary for nursing and midwifery students was £6,701 non-means-tested. Frigging recession is getting everywhere.

re-structures mean existing HCAs are competing for their own jobs along with new people wanting to get into it, plus with nursing becomming more competitive than it was in the past (when they had to heavily recruit nursing students) a lot of wanna be nurses are going for the HCA jobs instead of applying straight away.

its the same with band 5s here, they don't apply for a particular ward, it goes to general recruitment and then they are placed wherever if they get the interview. Exerienced nurses can apply to specific posts.

its all about flexibility flexibility flexibility, if you don't have that you don't really stand a chance! if you can work different days / times every week and have your shifts changed then you'll be okay. Yes there are out patients/day surgery jobs but they are very few and have a lot of experienced HCAs applying for them

Same for nursing students, always see 1st year parent students getting a shock when they find out that it does not go down well for allowances in shift patterns to be requested on the basis of having children - why does noone take them aside during the application process and really explain the commitment to them???? hate to see them dropping out/failing every year!

well to be more exact, HCAs who got relocated are trying to get back to their previous places etc. Some experienced HCAs here are even taking domestic etc positions while they apply for HCA jobs.