Are you a high school student about to graduate and wondering why become a nurse? Or maybe you’re someone looking for a career change? Well you’ll hear a lot of reasons to become a nurse, and while some will resonate with you, others won’t.
The truth is, you don’t need to feel all of the reasons listed in this article to know whether you should become a nurse. But if you read on and find some of them are catching your attention – well you might have found your calling.
What is a Nurse?
Nurses are regulated healthcare personnel who provide care based on their specialisation and the area of the healthcare system that they work in. The most common AHPRA nurses are Enrolled Nurses (EN) who complete a 2 year Diploma of Nursing and Registered Nurses (RN) who have completed a 3-year Bachelor of Nursing.
Why Become a Nurse
5 Reasons Why You Should Become a Nurse
Here are the answers to why you should become a nurse. Just remember, not all of them need to strike a chord with you for nursing to be your ideal career.
This isn’t a guide like the 6 C’s, or some form of checklist. It’s a chance to self-reflect on the deep motivations that successful nurses feel, and to ask yourself what you really want out of your professional life.
1. You Care
Let’s get the cliche one out of the way first. Obviously, to become a nurse you should have a desire to care for people. If you don’t, you probably aren’t going to enjoy your job very much!
When we say you need to be passionate about caring, it’s more than just wanting to help people. Most people want to help people. But nursing goes further than that. It’s about putting care before your comfort, your feelings, and sometimes even your patient’s feelings.
Care is about pushing yourself through exhaustion to make sure the last patient of the day gets the same experience as the first. Care is about holding the patient who lies about taking their medication accountable because it’s better for them in the long run. Care is telling a patient’s family that the prognosis isn’t good, even though they’ll be heartbroken.
Care is more than just helping when it’s easy or convenient, it’s about helping even when it’s not.
2. You Pursue Excellence
The healthcare system is a beast. It has countless moving parts, hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of patients. But what keeps it functioning and improving is individuals who are committed to providing an excellent standard of care.
The ability to provide excellent care is infinitely scalable in nursing, because so is the human experience. Care isn’t just about treating illnesses, it’s about the overall patient satisfaction during the experience.
To become a nurse, you should have an unquenchable desire to deliver the optimal patient experience. To be the most efficient nurse in a unit, and not being afraid to think critically and reform processes that need improvement. Pursuing excellence isn’t easy, but for truly excellent people, they can’t help but strive for it.
If you have this drive, there’ll never be a day in your career where you can’t find something you can make better, whether it be a person or a system.
3. You Want Advancement
Some people fall in love with jobs or skills that aren’t really suited to careers. This is common in professions where people work alone rather than in teams or organisations. Thankfully, in nursing you can do a job that you love without sacrificing your desire for advancement.
Throughout your career as a nurse, you’ll progress from nursing placements, to either an EN or RN, and then potentially into nursing management. There is no shortage of opportunities to advance or specialise into specific branches.
If you need to feel like there’s always another rung in the ladder to strive towards, it’s a strong indication that you should become a nurse.
4. You Want Security
They say that the average millennial will have ten careers in their lifetime – but if that sounds stressful to you it could be a sign that you should become a nurse.
Nurses are always in demand in Australia, and healthcare is a profession that will always need a human touch. Patients will always need a friendly face to look forward to, a hand to hold for comfort, or someone to communicate with in a familiar way.
Most people have a strong desire to feel secure in their lives. While that includes financial stability, it’s also about having a purpose and not feeling like that purpose can be taken away. Should you become a nurse, you’ll have a career that the country sorely needs, and that will sustain you throughout your entire working life.
5. You Want Variety
If you’re young, job variety might not be too high on your list. Afterall, you probably haven’t had a job for long enough to be bored of it yet! But picture yourself in a career, and then picture yourself still doing it in forty years time.
Does it hold its appeal?
With nursing, you can take on very different roles, all without having to restart in a new career. This keeps nursing fresh and exciting.
While all of the different nursing careers fall under the umbrella of healthcare, the skills required to do them differ enormously. If you are someone who craves learning new skills and techniques in your professional life, it’s a good reason to consider becoming a nurse.
While you probably think of working in a hospital when you picture working as a nurse, there are actually a variety of settings you can work in. There are aged care homes, community nursing roles, remote nursing and even travel nursing. You’ll never be bored, and there is room to re-specialise or add new skills to your repertoire.
How to Become a Nurse
So, you’ve decided you should become a nurse? Fantastic! But how do you actually do it?
We’ve created some resources that can help you.
Different types of nursing degrees and courses.
The 10 best nursing universities.
Have You Considered a Nursing Agency?
One of the best ways to get experience as a nurse is by joining a nursing agency. They allow you to experience working in different settings, and with different people. This lets you get a sense of the possibilities of a nursing career far quicker than if you become based in a single ward of a single hospital for years at a time.
Nurses Now is the leading nursing agency on the Central Coast. We offer a range of different nursing and support positions.
If you or someone you know would like to join Nurses Now, get in touch today.