The Rewards of Being a Nurse
The rewards of being a nurse are many. Most nurses would probably say the rewards are emotional or spiritual, but they can also be financial. It depends on what motivates you to be a nurse, and what kind of nursing you choose to do.
It is true that there is a shortage of nurses. It is also true that you can train to be a vocational nurse very quickly. You can be on the job in a year. During times like these, that can be a reward in itself – the ability to find a job, and even the ability to pick between jobs. With more nursing education, there are even more choices, and also better pay. There will continue to be increasingly more jobs for nurses in the future. So if you want a career with a potential for job security, being a nurse is a good choice. In that case, the rewards of being a nurse for you would be financial, as well as the reward of feeling secure about work.
Beyond that, most nurses want to help people. That is a big reason why they choose to be nurses. The rewards for nurses like this come from doing just that – helping other people through difficult times in their lives. Hospital nurses may help their patients through the most difficult times of all. They may also help the patients' families the same way. All will appreciate the attention of the nurse. Unfortunately, not every patient or every family tells the nurse how much they appreciate him or her. They should. But nurses also know that they are helping people even when the people are too ill or stressed to thank them.
Nurses may get to join in the celebration of the birth of a baby. There is hardly a more joyous occasion, and nurses are there when it happens.
Nurses are in the postoperative room as patients awaken from surgical procedures. This is a challenging place, since some people are disoriented and may not know exactly what happened. This might be a frightening place for many. Perhaps they are going to hear bad news. Or they might start to wake up, and the news might be good. Either way, nurses are there, helping them recover.
In a totally different location, home health nurses can almost become family members if they take care of a patient over a long period of time. They may be the person a sick, elderly patient counts on. There are great emotional rewards to knowing that you helped someone stay in their home and out of the hospital. There are also great rewards if you see someone recover after surgery, or a stroke – anything that keeps them from being mobile. As they start to walk again and regain some of their freedom, that can also be a celebratory time.
Home health nurses may also be involved in hospice care. Hospice care means taking care of someone during what is expected to be the last six months of their life. Often hospice isn't requested until much later, when the patient has only weeks to live. In these cases, the nurse will help keep the patient pain free and comfortable. The nurse may also be helping the family. When the end of life comes, most people will have mixed emotions. While it can be difficult, it is also very rewarding to be able to help people through this time. Most hospice nurses will say that it is rewarding, or they would not do it.
Another type of reward of being a nurse is the freedom it can give you. You can be a nurse anywhere. You can work anywhere in the United States, and there are services which pay nurses to travel to locations where they are needed. You can work for a single individual or a large company. You can even work on a cruise ship.
You can choose to specialize in a particular type of nursing. Being able to chose something and then do it is very rewarding. You can also choose to continue your education, as far as you want to and can afford to do. You might wind up as a nurse-midwife, in which case you will be delivering babies. There is hardly any more rewarding job than that.
But with all of the rewards, most nurses would say that taking care of their patients is why they do the job.
Published: 2009-10-14
