Nursing is not for everyone. It’s a college major and a career that constantly challenges you physically, mentally, and spiritually. It pushes you past your limits, down to your bare bones, and forces you to fight for your patients and your future patients when you’ve got nothing left to give... but you find it.
Nursing is not for the faint of heart. It is for the lionhearted. It’s for the person who can be splattered with blood and spit, expose themselves to dangerous illnesses and diseases, and literally stab a patient with needles for the sake of knowing it’s going to help this human being get well. It’s for the person who is yelled at, screamed at, talked down to, pushed around, and disrespected, sometimes by the patient, sometimes by the patient’s family, and sometimes even by the doctors.
Nursing is not for the weak. It is for the strong. It’s for people who want to treat patients with incredibly difficult backgrounds and situations, and who want to advocate for their patients. It’s for the people who hold the hands of the dying, bathe the ill and the elderly in their beds, listen to their patients and the families cry, and who speak up when something going on just isn’t right. It’s for the ones who have to know when to make the call, who to call, and how important it is to ask for help. It’s for the ones who spend all day on their feet to get someone else back up on theirs.
Nursing is not for the selfish. It is for the selfless. It’s for the ones who see patients as whole human beings, not just as ailments and illnesses. It’s for the ones who feel their hearts break to see their patients in pain. It’s for the ones who don’t go to the bathroom for hours, just to spend more time caring for their patients. It’s for the ones who are determined to make a positive impact on someone’s life, and possibly save it. It’s for the ones who make sure patients are taken care of for more than their stay in the hospital/facility, and that they have a support system for after. It’s for the ones who have to tell a patient’s family that they didn't make it, and then who cry on the car ride home from work. It’s for the ones who spend a career investing themselves in other people without expecting anything in return.
Nursing is not for robots, it is for the ones with the biggest hearts of them all. We memorize drug calculations and anatomical systems. We glue our eyes to textbooks and notes and study guides for hours. We spend more time studying than doing anything else. We learn pathophysiology, organic chemistry, and informatics. We are more than walking encyclopedias. We pursue the field of nursing because we want to spend our lives doing what we’re best at: caring. We put others before ourselves. We dream of 12-hour shifts and non-stop rounds. We dream of missing lunch breaks to document and being overloaded with patients. We don’t choose nursing, nursing chose us. Because nursing isn’t for everyone, it’s only for the brave ones with hearts even bigger than their souls.
