We receive many questions from nursing students asking us about the nursing profession. Some of these students are asking these questions for a school project, while others are asking for curiosity. They want to know the daily routine of a nurse, and what I like most about being a nurse. I have collected a list of common questions we receive from students asking about the nursing profession. This can help you in your research paper (just give credit when credit is due) or help you decide if the nursing profession sounds like something, you might want to pursue.
Recommended citation in MLA format:
Page, S. L., BSN, RN. “Interviewing a Nurse about the Job | Questions & Answers about Being a Nurse for School Project.” Web log post. Registered Nurse RN Nursing Career Jobs Salary Nursing Schools Blog. N.p., 16 Nov. 2013. Web.
What is your Daily Routine as a Nurse (RN) like?
Because nursing is, a versatile career not all nurses will have the same daily routines. For instances, a nurse who works in the cardiac cath lab will have a different daily routine versus a nurse who works in a cardiac stress lab. With that said, I will tell you my personal daily routine as a nurse.
I work in a cardiac stress lab where we conduct cardiac stress tests, transesophageal echocardiograms (TEEs), place heart monitors, tilt table tests, cardioversions, and stress echocardiograms. We perform these tests in a hospital setting and receive patients to our area from inside and outside the hospital. I arrive to my job around 6:30 am and collect the doctor orders for the day for patients needing tests. After everything is organized with the ancillary departments (nuclear medicine & echo/vascular) who will be helping with the tests and patient labs and NPO status have been confirmed, my team and I start performing procedures starting at 8:30 am to 5:00pm. Some days are shorter than others depending on patient volume. The shortest day I have ever worked in the stress lab was 8:00 am to 1:00 pm because it was a slow day. The longest day I have ever worked was 6:30 am to 6:15 pm and this was a very busy day.
Skills my job requires: starting IVs, knowing the side effects and how to administer stress chemicals, initiating and maintaining cardiac drips, giving moderate sedation, recovering patients from moderate sedation, assisting the physician and nurse practitioner with tests, performing bubble and Definity studies, performing CPR and following ACLS protocol (if needed), educating patients, and of course whatever else that is within my scope of practice. Every day is different from the next and I am required to use many skills. For instances, one time I had a patient come down from the floor who needed to have deep suction through his trach. Therefore, I must know a wide variety of skills.
How has your Job as a Nurse Impacted your Life?
This is a great question because being a nurse does affect your life. It can do it in a positive or negative way depending on how you handle it. Before I became a nurse, I had no idea how important the job of a nurse was. When I finally became a nurse and started working as a new nurse graduate, it hit me in about the 6 month of working that my job was vitality important not only for the patients under my care but also for the functionality of the health care system as a whole. The health care system could not work successfully without the job of the nurse.
In addition, I no longer view my job as a nurse as a “job” but literally as a calling. I know that might sound cheesy but when you finally start to feel like you know what you are doing and you see how you can help people you begin to look at your “job” as this is who I am and what I am called to do. It really gives you a sense of purpose and makes life more meaningful. If you never experience this, it may be because you are in the wrong field of nursing (as I was during my first three years as a nurse) and need to switch to another department, or you picked the wrong profession.
What do you like most about being a Nurse?
This is a tough question because I like many things about being a nurse. Of course, I love the patient to nurse interaction because as a nurse I get to encounter patients from every side of life. For example, I have taken care of patients from different cultural backgrounds and it is amazing to see the difference in how you interact with these patients and how different their healthcare expectations are. In addition, I get to see the generational differences among patients, which is very eye opening and enlightening.
Another thing I like about being a nurse gets back to the question above about it being a calling. It is very rewarding to be able to leave your job at the end of the day and feel a sense of satisfaction that you helped may a real difference in a person life. I also feel blessed that I am able to be a nurse during this time era because of the amazing technological advances in medicine and electronics.
What do you like least about being a Nurse?
As with any thing, you do in life there will always be days where you question yourself about being a nurse. It is usually the days where everything went wrong and you feel incompetent and over worked. As a nurse, you will sometimes experience these feeling because it is the nature of the job. Nursing is about taking care of people and people are unpredictable sometimes. As humans, we hate unpredictably and tend not to handle it the best.
Another thing I don’t like about being a nurse is that we sometimes see the ugly side of life that others don’t see. For instances, when you see innocent babies die because of abuse they suffered at the hands of the parents or watch a patient die from drug abuse and see the affects it takes on their family, this can take a toll on your mental health. These situations can carry over into your personal life and make you feel depressed.
Updates:
As we get more questions from people like you, we will post them here with answers. Use the “contact us” form to ask questions.