What is it like being a nurse?

What's it like being a nurse?

• I am considering being a nurse in casualty, but i want to ask a few questions; 1) What is it like being a nurse in Casualty? 2) Is the pay good? 3) I watch " Holby City" and "Casualty" dramas. Is nursing in casualty anything like this? 4) Do you make good friends? 5) I am either doing Childhood studies or Sport BTEC in sixth form, which one will help me get in?

• Answer:

  It's a fast paced job. You need patience and need to be able to deal with all types of people. Especially the kind who are abusive if they come in drunk with injuries or they are incapacitated from a night out. Drunks and other sorts of people who don't particularly want to be there may be abusive or refuse to let you treat them, and there are definitely always people who will try and discharge themselves, whether they are ill or not that bad. You need very good people skills and you need to be able to cope under pressure. Nursing in real life is nothing like in Casualty/Holby City, except the fact you are likely to get abuse from patients. Nurses in real life tend not to get involved with patients, and it's not that common for nurses to be dating doctors or whatever - it happens, but not as often as it seems to in Holby/Casualty. In a real life casualty, there'll be awkward patients, lots of work and hardly time to breathe, let alone have a personal crisis like Casualty & Holby City staff always seem to be having. You might make friends with other nurses, but nurses making friends with doctors isn't that common. In my experience, doctors seem to be either far too busy to bother or just to arrogant to care about forging friendships with nurses. Doctor/nurse friendships happen occasionally, but I wouldn't say they are that common. You might make good friends at university, but then again, you do do some of your degree working/learning as a student nurse in the hospital setting, and you might be in a different hospital to other people on the same degree as you. Neither of those courses will help you get into nursing. You need to do a science course. Do a BTEC in Applied Science instead. Childhood Studies is most likely to only help if you plan to do social work, and Sport will only really help you get into sports programs. Even if you plan to paeditric nursing (with kids), you have to do science - you have to know biology in the nursing profession. If you don't have science at level 3, there is next to no chance of getting into a nursing degree - unless you work for years and years as a Healthcare Assistant first. Studying a science based qualification at college is your best route into nursing. Studying sport wont get you in unless you have science qualifications @ level 3 as well.