What is nursing like, have lots of questions? I'm 16?

Have you considered being a Care Flight nurse? They really work at saving lives because they're the only one with the patient until they get to the hospital. ER nurses deal with patients who have been in accidents, who have heart attacks, who have been mauled by animals, who have been shot, you name it. Not all hospitals are trauma care hospitals. Unless it's a major city there's usually just one. Victims of a plane crash or a major car pile up would go to a trauma hospital if one was available.

No type of nursing is constantly action packed.Even ER or trauma nurses take vitals and do charting. Thereis no type of nursing where you don't care for the patient.It doesn't have to be an emergency situation for you to be saving lives.Floor nurses save lives too.It sounds like you watch a lot of TV.Nursing isn't like that.ER nurses spend a lot of time looking after mundane things.Wound nurses go around changing dressings on wounds all day.Their patients aren't critically ill,quite often elderly and bed ridden. I don't think you have a realistic view of nursing.If you go through nursing school you will have to spend many hours in clinical placements taking care of patients.Some of these placements will be in nursing homes.

No type of nursing is constantly action packed.Even ER or trauma nurses take vitals and do charting. Thereis no type of nursing where you don't care for the patient.It doesn't have to be an emergency situation for you to be saving lives.Floor nurses save lives too.It sounds like you watch a lot of TV.Nursing isn't like that.ER nurses spend a lot of time looking after mundane things.Wound nurses go around changing dressings on wounds all day.Their patients aren't critically ill,quite often elderly and bed ridden. I don't think you have a realistic view of nursing.If you go through nursing school you will have to spend many hours in clinical placements taking care of patients.Some of these placements will be in nursing homes.

I agree with the first two answers. Yes, the specialties you mentioned will have a higher likelihood of performing more of those life-saving duties (except surgical nursing), but if you think you're going to be some kind of savior, saving lives every single day, multiple times per shift, you are going to be severely disappointed. Nursing is not about "saving lives". It is about caring for patients, and sometimes that care does involve life-saving measures, but you will never be saving a life on your own. Nurses often have only a very small role in direct life-saving actions. For example, in the case of a Code Blue in a hospital, you might find the patient unresponsive and begin CPR, but once the code team arrives (doctors, anesthesiologists, respiratory therapists, etc.) you will be crowded out and probably be delegated different tasks. And it's not like codes will happen all the time. I work in a large metropolitan hospital and you don't hear Code Blue every day. ICU nursing is more critical care, you work with one or two critical patients but again - it's not directly life-saving other than you are closely watching monitors, interpreting results, administering medications, etc. You must understand that there is a lot of patient and family interaction that goes beyond the tasks you perform. You need to be able to develop trusting relationships with these people, treat them with compassion and with a non-judgmental attitude for ALL people, provide all kinds of education. As for flight nursing, like the first answer mentioned, this is a good idea for you BUT, it is a VERY limited line of work. There are only a handful of flight nursing jobs available in a given area, and you would definitely need a whole lot of previous experience working in the ER and ICU. It's not a job you could step into in the first two years of your professional career. Also, you would find surgical nursing boring. Surgical nurses are largely circulators, meaning they are not hands-on in the surgery, they are documenting, keeping track of equipment counts, communicating between the different team members, making sure the room stays in order and remains sterile, etc. You'd probably hate it. If you advanced your degree to a MSN or DNP and became a Nurse Practitioner, you could be trained as a Surgical Assist to partner with the surgeons and be hands-on during surgery. Part of going to nursing school is getting exposed to many different ideas, specialty areas, etc. so that you get a bit more of a clear idea of where you might like to work. You might need to job-hop for a few years until you find the right fit for you. I certainly would never discourage you from nursing, but I do think you need to expand your thinking about what the role of the nurse is, because it isn't all glamorous life-saving action. Hardly at all, even when you work in the ER (or especially? - ER is a lot of BS - drunks, kids, mentally ill, minor stuff that you will laugh that people came to the ER for). So do some more research, see if there is a job-shadow program in a hospital near you so you can see what nurses really do on an "average" day. Good luck.

I agree with the first two answers. Yes, the specialties you mentioned will have a higher likelihood of performing more of those life-saving duties (except surgical nursing), but if you think you're going to be some kind of savior, saving lives every single day, multiple times per shift, you are going to be severely disappointed. Nursing is not about "saving lives". It is about caring for patients, and sometimes that care does involve life-saving measures, but you will never be saving a life on your own. Nurses often have only a very small role in direct life-saving actions. For example, in the case of a Code Blue in a hospital, you might find the patient unresponsive and begin CPR, but once the code team arrives (doctors, anesthesiologists, respiratory therapists, etc.) you will be crowded out and probably be delegated different tasks. And it's not like codes will happen all the time. I work in a large metropolitan hospital and you don't hear Code Blue every day. ICU nursing is more critical care, you work with one or two critical patients but again - it's not directly life-saving other than you are closely watching monitors, interpreting results, administering medications, etc. You must understand that there is a lot of patient and family interaction that goes beyond the tasks you perform. You need to be able to develop trusting relationships with these people, treat them with compassion and with a non-judgmental attitude for ALL people, provide all kinds of education. As for flight nursing, like the first answer mentioned, this is a good idea for you BUT, it is a VERY limited line of work. There are only a handful of flight nursing jobs available in a given area, and you would definitely need a whole lot of previous experience working in the ER and ICU. It's not a job you could step into in the first two years of your professional career. Also, you would find surgical nursing boring. Surgical nurses are largely circulators, meaning they are not hands-on in the surgery, they are documenting, keeping track of equipment counts, communicating between the different team members, making sure the room stays in order and remains sterile, etc. You'd probably hate it. If you advanced your degree to a MSN or DNP and became a Nurse Practitioner, you could be trained as a Surgical Assist to partner with the surgeons and be hands-on during surgery. Part of going to nursing school is getting exposed to many different ideas, specialty areas, etc. so that you get a bit more of a clear idea of where you might like to work. You might need to job-hop for a few years until you find the right fit for you. I certainly would never discourage you from nursing, but I do think you need to expand your thinking about what the role of the nurse is, because it isn't all glamorous life-saving action. Hardly at all, even when you work in the ER (or especially? - ER is a lot of BS - drunks, kids, mentally ill, minor stuff that you will laugh that people came to the ER for). So do some more research, see if there is a job-shadow program in a hospital near you so you can see what nurses really do on an "average" day. Good luck.