How can the reality of nursing as a career differ from typical expectations?
One of the problems with hospital staff nursing is that it can involve off shifts, like 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. or midnight to 8 a.m., or rotating shifts, and can require working weekends and holidays. When I was working the midnight shift as an intensive care nurse, I had a really hard time sleeping during the day. Because of the nursing shortage, many hospital staff nurses are asked, or even required, to work overtime. In most clinical settings, the constraints of “productivity”—being required to see a minimum number of patients per hour or per day, necessary to make your position cost-effective—can interfere with the “ideal” job you’d like to do. It’s hard to provide what you think of as the perfect care when you need to see a patient every 15 minutes. Do nursing professionals typically use any specialized computer programs? If so, how important is it for graduating students to be well-versed with these programs? Nurses know how to use computers. Many practices, both inpatient and outpati
