Warning: this post will come off as pessimistic. But as I mention in the “about this blog” section, I don’t bullshit my readers. You will hear my straight opinions.

Here’s an analysis of the ups and downs of the field, with my answer to “how to tell if nursing is the right career for you” at the very end.

Negatives of Nursing:

1 –The physical nature of the job is nothing short of incredible.

I once heard a professor say: “How many 12 hour shifts are you going to work before you realize it’s all the same?” At first I thought she was saying nursing is boring. But as I progressed in my career, I realized she was referring to the physical nature of the job. I can’t tell you how many times I have had to push and pull on 250-300 pound patients, wondering when my back would give out. I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve slid patients up in bed, compromising my back with a grossly unnatural movement. I also haven’t mentioned the number of times I’ve touched patients’ anuses to clean them. I’ve dipped my finger in urine, diarrhea, pus, pussy, penis, hepatitis C, C. diff, and HIV. I’ve also worked on consecutive night shifts where my entire body trembled from my lack of sleep. All that said, nursing is an extremely physical career. The labor intensive nature of nursing will only get worse as people get bigger and fatter (thanks, Burger King!).

Btw, nurses aren’t the only ones who resent obese patients. Here’s a perspective from docs.

So how do you tell if nursing is the right career for you? If you like pushing and pulling on fat people, nursing might be right for you.

2 – You have to listen to orders from doctors.

You will often feel like the doctor’s bitch as you ask for orders or permission to do things for patients. I’ve often condemned myself for being a pussy as I subserviently handed name stickers to docs or called them repeatedly in the middle of the night, only to have them scream at me for interrupting their sleep. My most painful moments happened when I’ve had to interact with female doctors who were close to my age. In those moments, this is what my self-talk looked like: “Wow, I must really be a fuck up if I’m asking permission to do my job from a woman I would be raping if we were back in China. Good job for being a little bitch, Walt!”

The aspect of nursing I hate the most is that there’s a culture of nurses stroking doctors. I’ve tried my best to confront this culture by treating doctors like coworkers, rather than gods. I’ve found that when I treat them with respect, they often reciprocate. 

So how do you tell if nursing is the right career for you? If you like to listen to orders from people you can physically dominate, then nursing might be a good career choice.

3- You will have to listen to orders from women.

Guess what happens when you have to take orders from females you feel smarter and bigger than? An irresistible urge to scream “Shut your trap, bitch!” begins to rock your mind. When this urge ravages your body, it will take an extreme amount of self-discipline to keep your mouth shut. I’m here to tell you that in your nursing career, you’ll be exercising this self-discipline all the time because female charge nurses and managers are everywhere.

So how do you tell if nursing is the right career for you? If you like it when little bitches try to tell you what to do, then nursing will be perfect for you!

Read this post for more info on how to deal with scrubs (or females that try to give you orders):

Positives of Nursing

1- You won’t always have a job, but job opportunities will be bountiful.

I’ve personally worked at seven different hospitals in four years, spending an average of six months at each job. I’ve been fired multiple times. Yet, I’m still working as a nurse. For how many other fields can you say that? In other fields such as broadcast journalism, word spreads quickly. In other words, if I were in another field and repeatedly jumped from job to job only to get fired multiple times, I’d probably reach a point where I became unemployable. The beauty of nursing is that you can screw up many, many times and still have job security. 

2 – You will be in a position of trust.

In my experience, people get into healthcare because they want to develop helpful and trusting relationships with patients. This endpoint is achievable as a nurse because the nature of your role requires that you stick with one to four patients per shift over the course of 8-12 hours. In fact, you’ll often find yourself listening to the life stories of older patients and developing caring relationships. On the flip side, doctors constantly complain that they don’t have enough time to spend with patients because they’re pressured by administrators to see as many patients as possible. So when it comes to the reason people get into healthcare (to develop helpful and trusting relationships), nurses come out on top.

3 – It makes financial sense.

I can think of only a handful of careers where you can make over $100,000 with a bachelor’s degree. Petroleum engineering? Definitely. History? No. Women’s Studies? That’s a joke. Nursing? You have a shot! Here’s my best advice for male nurses who want to make six digits: increase your hourly rate. You can do this by either advancing your skills and education or by working off shifts, such as night shifts or “call” shifts where you are available to work over a span of 24 hours. I’d also recommend going to a public university for nursing, aiming for your bachelors degree rather than an associates. A great goal would be to graduate with no debt. That way, you can focus your 20s on making money, investing your savings, and learning about your trade.

4 – You will have access to women.

Have you ever wondered why Asians tend to be conservative in having kids, while Mexicans seem to have a more liberal stance? That is to say, why do Asians have such few children while Mexicans reproduce like rabbits (comparatively speaking)? I believe cultural differences make all the difference. For instance, if my Asian sister became pregnant at the age of 17, my dad would have forced an abortion. But if my sister and dad were both Mexican, the story would probably be different, and my sister would give birth. Similar situations lead to different results because cultural values differ.

My Asian culture stressed productivity. Because I was busy reading books and attending church meetings as a teen, I never “hung out” with women. In fact, I didn’t see a real vagina until I was 21 years old (I was inserting a foley catheter into a patient, rather than putting my phallus into a girl). But the Mexican culture produces a different environment where interactions among boys and girls are encouraged. Guess what happens when boys and girls spend significant time together? You guessed right: offspring!

In nursing, men are placed into environments where they are surrounded by women for at least 36 hours per week. In other words, men don’t have to try too hard in the dating scene because the dating scene comes to them every time they show up in their jobs. The nursing landscape is a metaphor for the Mexican teenage landscape in that boy-girl interactions are ubiquitous. The only difference is that in nursing, 90% of workers are female. Men therefore have a huge advantage in terms of access to women.

Let’s just put it this way: when men and women spend too much time together, romance is inevitable.

So if you’re in your teens or early twenties, how do you know if nursing is right for you? The short answer is that it’s impossible to tell. The long answer is that you should pursue a nursing degree if there’s nothing you’re passionate about. Nursing is a conservative choice.