So often when adolescence are asked what they want to do after high school, they will say something that has something to do with a health profession. Of course, teachers and other people they look up to will cheer them on and push them toward it, but they never tell them about everything that they will have to go through in college and in the real world.
1. The hours are crazy
There won't be any of these 9-5 work days, or these 8 hour shifts in the medical field. Depending on your shift, you'll have to be there at 6 am and you won't get to leave until 6 pm or even later. Depending on your speciality, it could be more intense than that.
2. You better love science
Because there's going to be a lot of it. Both inside of college and outside, there is never any escape from science. If you do not like science, the medical field is not for you. Yeah, science is cool as hell and it's hard not to love it, but you really have to love it and to have a passion for it and you have to be able to understand it. Otherwise, you are not going to have a good time.
3. You deal with emotionally exhausting situations daily
No one likes to think of this, but people will die. Your patient's will die sometimes and there's no getting around that fact. Some people can handle it, others cannot. Some people can emotionally detach themselves, while others cannot. You will see the saddest things every day, but most people don't even think about it like that.
In high school I went to school with several girls who wanted to be a pediatric nurse. That's all fun and games until something doesn't go right. Believe it or not, things don't go right more often than they do go right.
If you are not one of these special people who can remove themselves emotionally from the situation, you are not going to enjoy the profession at all.
4. You will not have much of a life
A majority of your life will be consumed by your job. If you're not asleep, you're probably at work. Sure you will have killer pay checks, but no time to enjoy them. It's the honest truth. The honest, but ugly truth.
5. You're being exposed to life threatening disease daily
MRSA, C-Diff, HIV, HPV, and so much more will be floating around right in front of your face all day every day. If you're not careful, you could become infected and no one wants that. But no one ever tells you about that before you go out of your way to get into your medical program.
6. You're going to have to do a lot of gross stuff all the time
It doesn't matter what you're doing in the medical field, you're going to do something gross at some point. In nursing you're dealing a lot with blood, various sorts of waste materials, urine, vomit, and so much more. With respiratory therapy you're dealing a lot with blood, split, snot, and you're playing in lung juices of every kind. These things will get on your hands, you will have to get up close and personal with these things. They will become your new normal.
The whole reason for this list isn't to scare potential new health care workers away, it's to warn those who don't know. Coming into college, I didn't know what to expect. No one told me any of this, I just had to figure it out.
