re: Daily career change mid-career thread: Male Nurse

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Hope you enjoy cleaning up patients' vomit, urine, and other bodily fluids, cleaning bedpans, wiping old peoples' arse, and getting bitched at by grumpy old people who think you took too long to bring their medicine.

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Common myths, most of what you listed is done by "housekeeping" staff, the rest by nursing assistants.

Been a RN for about 6 years now. Worked 2 years in the ER at Ochsner Main, then 2 years in the surgical ICU at Ochsner Main, and now currently working at Heart Hospital of Lafayette as a hospital supervisor/charge nurse role. Make ok money if you put in the hours...I put in almost 400 hours of overtime last year and made right under 100K, and that's working just day shifts. I enjoyed my first 5 years of nursing, but have recently become burned out. I've always worked 48+ hours/week because I have become accustomed to the money...after 6 years of it, I just hit a wall with the patients and their families thinking they are staying at a Holiday Inn and want to be pampered. Granted, not every patient is like that, but more than you care for. Also, as a supervisor, there's a lot of stuff in management that I particularly don't care for.

It's a good field if you're single and can hop around freely. You can basically get a job wherever you want, anywhere you want. As a previous poster stated, go in to do your job and don't get caught with work drama. Working with predominately females, there tend to be a lot of gossip and just drama that goes with it. I'm married with 2 kids, so I kind of block it all out. Advancement is there, but you will need more schooling. CRNA is the route to take...3 additional years of school and probably coming out making $150K in Louisiana. That was my goal and still is, but it's becoming harder as the years go by (I'm 31). I've seen older male nurses than me with families, and they seem miserable as frick. I don't want to get to that point. Eventually, there is a cap you reach as an RN, and unless you go back to school, you're stuck making $40/hr dealing with the general public.

By the way, I went to OLOL Accelerated Nursing Program when I was 25. I graduated at LSU with a BS in Kinesiology, but never did anything substantial with it. That accelerated program was right at 10 months, and I got my RN license a month later. It was approx $18,000 for tuition/fees when I went in 2010. Went to the Tulane satellite campus.

Wow! That accelerated program seems like an awesome way to go. The program I'm looking at would take me 4 semesters and that's for an ADN.

LSUA

Pros

My buddy that's a male nurse always shows me all the nudes the married female nurses send him

Cons
You're not a doctor

No. I should have said most of the prereqs. I have to take those and a Chemistry.

Knocking those out this summer, but that's it.

fwiw; i was an operator for a year at dow and made this change.

Do travel nursing...

My friend travels the country. Slays poon in every state for 13 weeks at a time.

Get stipend for living expenses etc, and averages @ $2500 a week take home. Worked a strike in California and got paid $10K per week for 11 weeks.

That's a pretty good living.

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My friend travels the country. Slays poon in every state for 13 weeks at a time.

Get stipend for living expenses etc, and averages @ $2500 a week take home. Worked a strike in California and got paid $10K per week for 11 weeks.

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This. But you will need a year or two of experience to feel comfortable. Especially working a strike. Not traveling before wife and I had our son is a regret.

Poon depends on where you work COMPLETELY. ER, Cath Lab, Cardiac Rehab will all have potential. And geographically. You may wind up in a nest of Filipinos and Nigerians. NEITHER of which are gonna frick a white boy.

ER gives access to sloots. Female EMS are total whores.