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Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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Originally Posted by statisticsnerd
Please. Preparing tax returns for 65 hours a week for three solid months, only going home to sleep, is one of the least rewarding jobs around. Do you have any idea how mind-numbing it is to do nothing but prepare tax returns day in and day out? Plus, the trend nowadays with CPA firms is to not pay overtime. Been there, done that. I would work at a Starbucks before I would work as a tax accountant for a CPA firm again, and I'm being completely serious.
Wow, I could have written this post. Aside from the incredibly mind-numbingness of the actual tax preparer job; you get to deal with the never-ending regs that essentially want tax preparers to audit their clients or face preparer penalties and fines.
To the OP: previously, I was a 911 dispatcher. I left that position and picked the most boring profession I could think of because the stress was getting to me. Turns out I don't like boring so much. I don't regret any choices I've made because they've certainly made things interesting. However, I would suggest that you volunteer before making that commitment to nursing. Otherwise, you may find yourself in this same position again. Also, why do you go into accounting in that first place? The answer might give you some insight.
I work in a hospital and love it. Then again I am in the facilities department. We manage evertything that has to do with our 2 campuses, 12 county clinics, medical office space, and other buildings that we own. I have considered over the years of changing professions and becoming an RN. For those that are interested here is what it takes in California
First the education. You have to get a lot of classes out of the way. Anatomy, Physiology, MicroBiology are the big 3. In California you have to get a B or higher in each of those three classes. You also have to take Math for healthcare workers. In many schools you have to become a CNA before you can apply to the program.
After you get the education out of the way, and that can take a couple years, you have to get accepted into the program. That can take another couple years just to get accepted in.
Nursing is a two year program and for the most part you will be too busy to work during the Fall and Spring semester. Our hospital allows employees to work 24 hours a week. If you are lucky you can get paid for your clinical time here at the hospital if you are an employee.
Figure on about 6 years from the time you decide to start the program.
I work in a hospital and love it. Then again I am in the facilities department. We manage evertything that has to do with our 2 campuses, 12 county clinics, medical office space, and other buildings that we own. I have considered over the years of changing professions and becoming an RN. For those that are interested here is what it takes in California
First the education. You have to get a lot of classes out of the way. Anatomy, Physiology, MicroBiology are the big 3. In California you have to get a B or higher in each of those three classes. You also have to take Math for healthcare workers. In many schools you have to become a CNA before you can apply to the program.
After you get the education out of the way, and that can take a couple years, you have to get accepted into the program. That can take another couple years just to get accepted in.
Nursing is a two year program and for the most part you will be too busy to work during the Fall and Spring semester. Our hospital allows employees to work 24 hours a week. If you are lucky you can get paid for your clinical time here at the hospital if you are an employee.
Figure on about 6 years from the time you decide to start the program.
Which program is this? Is this for a BSN?
All of the current nurses I know graduated from 4-year university and received their BSN.
Here are the admission requirements for a good nursing program in NJ:
You bring up a good point. My post was for an RN with an AS degree and not with a BSN. Lets explain further though. To get into any Nursing program, meaning someone who will become an RN, you will have prerequisite classes that you have to complete before getting accepted. Most schools will tell you to apply to as many programs as you can after you have the required classes out of the way. Most programs have a wait list. You can not apply to any of the programs untill you complete your prerequisite classes.
The prereqs for our local Junior College program can take someone up to 4 sememsters to complete, if they can get the classes that they need. Depending on if you go to school in the summer this can be two years.
The schools in California have a lottery system based on points that are earned for differant things. Grades count for so many points. If you work in a hospital you get so many points. You get more if you are working in a nursing related dicipline. If you allready have a degree you get more points. If you are currently serving in the military or a Veteran you get a lot of points. Based on your points you are then given a number. Everyone that has applied to the program will get picked for the program based on their number. After all slots are filled the remainder get to wait it out. The next semester they either get picked for the program or move up the list. It can take anywhere from getting in the next sememster to on average waiting 2 years, or up to 4 years to get in.
The requirements are set up by the State of California and not the schools themselves. All schools would have a similar set up. Not all schools will be as impacted as others though. Does not matter if you are after a Associates or a BSN in Nursing. Many get the RN and then go on to get a Bachelors Degree later on. Still, as you brought up, many do like to get the BSN within the same program. Our State School has a very good program. They even offer a bridge program for people like me that allready have a degree or two. You still have to have the prereqs taken care of before you can enter the program though.
Many Hospitals have the upper hand in hiring and where I work they prefer someone with a BSN or even an MSN. In todays world the Hospital can pick and choose. Not too long ago every RN got a great job right out of school it seemed. Not always so today.
The best thing that can do is add an additional year or two to my first post. 2 years of prereqs, 2 years to weight, and 4 years to finish a BSN program.
I had a CNA license after I graduated from high school and I never put it to use because I took a semester long course and we did clinicals in Oncology, Labor and Delivery, and a long term care facility... the whole experience was one of the most depressing things I ever did. It was just so sad.
Oncology and long term care were depressing for obvious reasons... Labor and Delivery was depressing because I witnessed a young woman having to put her baby up for adoption (she was like 15, no father of the baby), I saw families having babies that clearly just couldn't afford to take care of themselves, let alone an ADDITIONAL kid, a baby being born with a developmental disability, it was all just too much.
After the class I never bothered to even look for a job. It just made me so sad.
Can I ask what did you decide to do after? This is exactly me about 7 years ago when I graduated hs.
Honestly, if nursing is just your "back up plan" without having a real passion or skill for it, PLEASE don't go into the field. There are excellent nurses who cannot get jobs because of the influx of new grads who went into it for the money, flexibility, ability to meet rich doctors (I kid you not) etc, without really caring about the patients and their needs.
Honestly, if nursing is just your "back up plan" without having a real passion or skill for it, PLEASE don't go into the field. There are excellent nurses who cannot get jobs because of the influx of new grads who went into it for the money, flexibility, ability to meet rich doctors (I kid you not) etc, without really caring about the patients and their needs.
You can totally disregard that ^ post, OP. There are some nurses say that all the time. They have some ongoing obsession and and obsolete notion that nursing is only for "certain people" like them who are "called" and there is a lot of harping that nursing schools have, essentially, been letting in too many of "the wrong kind of people." Nursing is full of moms and church women and whatnot who think only "people like us" should be in nursing. They don't want career changers, they don't want people who are better educated and more aggressive, ambitious, and competitive then them, and they don't want too many men in there, either.
That California ordeal to become just an associate degree RN is truly bizarre. In Pennsylvania, the western part, anyway, we have rather a lot of community colleges and branch campuses of schools like Penn State and Pitt that offer associate degree RN. We also have a plethora of diploma RN schools. Penn State and several other schools offer a RN to BSN bridge program that is mostly online coursework. Pitt and Waynesburg and maybe others offer an accelerated BS RN second degree for those people who already have a non-nursing bachelors. There are many options. There are not the long waiting lines and 2-4 years of lottery. As a rule, it takes most people 12 months to get the prereqs then they are immediately accepted by some RN program, either diploma or ADRN, and then it's about 24 months to complete the RN program. There was one school here that made you complete all non-nursing college, then you could do a diploma RN program with them in only 16 months. They just recently overhauled it, and now I believe it's back to 24 months but they have you doing college work concurrent with nursing classes.
So, relocate for RN school might be a possibility, if you are not tied down by home ownership or something.
You can basically put yourself at the level of a Nurse Practitioner in a much shorter period of time.
However, I'm not sure how you get the experience required to apply to those schools. They require a year or two of patient hours.
I thought about both paths quite a while ago because of perceived job security. I figured it would have been easy for me to get a Masters in Nursing and that could have put me ahead of the pack. However, in the end I decided it just wasn't right for me.
You can basically put yourself at the level of a Nurse Practitioner in a much shorter period of time.
However, I'm not sure how you get the experience required to apply to those schools. They require a year or two of patient hours.
I thought about both paths quite a while ago because of perceived job security. I figured it would have been easy for me to get a Masters in Nursing and that could have put me ahead of the pack. However, in the end I decided it just wasn't right for me.
Hi OP back again. Thanks for the wide range of responses. I thought about going to school to be a PA rather than an NP. I was speaking with a friend of mine who is a RN. She actually said to me if you want to go into the field for the money and financial stability, PA is the way to go. Like you said, they do require a year or two of patient hours. The prerequisites they ask for are also much more than what they require for nursing students. I wonder what the reason for that is.
Hi OP back again. Thanks for the wide range of responses. I thought about going to school to be a PA rather than an NP. I was speaking with a friend of mine who is a RN. She actually said to me if you want to go into the field for the money and financial stability, PA is the way to go. Like you said, they do require a year or two of patient hours. The prerequisites they ask for are also much more than what they require for nursing students. I wonder what the reason for that is.
The PA profession was originally created for medics returning from Vietnam, people who had maybe 1000s of hours of field experience but their credentials didn't fit with the civilian system. So this physician founded the PA field and it gave these folks a way to quickly get a credential and start working in the medical system.
I think that's why there's an expectation that you already have a lot of medical experience when you go into the field. One way you can get it is through volunteering; most hospitals have a volunteer program and they'll gladly take motivated people who want to help out with guiding visitors, running errands, and sometimes more hands-on assistance such as pushing wheelchairs and beds, taking vital signs (after a bit of training).
It's also a great way to get more familiar with medical professions to see if it's really something you'd like to get into. Best of luck!
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