Considering dropping out of nursing degree

I wish I had stumbled upon this thread before I had applied and started my nurse training. I am seriously considering calling it a day. The most challenging thing for me is the lack of quality of life each time I go out on placement. Everything seems to fall apart, my lifestyle habits; eating, sleeping pattern, running and being active just seem impossible to do and my priority is to just get through the shifts and rest before the next one. It is definitely not an easy life. Working such long hours with an hours break in the day is also difficult. It concerns me that not only nurses but many other healthcare professionals work these conditions, it must affect their concentration and ability to care and make decisions and lead to fatigue and burnout and in the long run damage their own health.

Reply 1

Charlotte's Web

21

Original post by rescueme

I wish I had stumbled upon this thread before I had applied and started my nurse training. I am seriously considering calling it a day. The most challenging thing for me is the lack of quality of life each time I go out on placement. Everything seems to fall apart, my lifestyle habits; eating, sleeping pattern, running and being active just seem impossible to do and my priority is to just get through the shifts and rest before the next one. It is definitely not an easy life. Working such long hours with an hours break in the day is also difficult. It concerns me that not only nurses but many other healthcare professionals work these conditions, it must affect their concentration and ability to care and make decisions and lead to fatigue and burnout and in the long run damage their own health.

Hi there, just to let you know, I've popped your post into its own thread as the one you posted in was pretty old and you're more likely to get better answers in a separate thread. Hope this is okay!

12 hour shifts vs. shorter shifts is quite a contentious issue and really it does depend on your personal preferences and how you prefer your work/life balance to work out. Some people do prefer long shifts as they have more full days off, but I completely understand why it can be hard when you feel like all you do for 3-5 days is work, rest, work, rest. I also questioned during my training how much student nurses are actually learning during hour 10, 11, 12, 13 etc. of their shifts.

Looking after your own health is always the most important thing. There is no way you can effectively care for others when you aren't caring for yourself and meeting your own basic needs.

It might be worth liasing with your placement to discuss whether it might be possible to do shorter shifts over a greater number of days or whether they would allow a mixture of long and short shifts to give yourself more time between shifts. You could also discuss this with your tutor at university to see if they have any suggestions.

I found that the 12 hour shifts were not for me while I was training, and then took a job which had early/late shifts over 5 days, which worked much better for me until I needed to travel to see sick family members, which was impossible given that my days off were hardly ever together. I now work Monday-Friday office hours which has given me the best quality of life I have had since I started nursing.

I think the thing you need to consider is what sort of lifestyle you want in the future, and whether there are opportunities within nursing which would work around that. Remember that your job is not your life, and whilst nursing is a vocation, it is so important to have time to yourself.

Reply 2

moonkatt

19

I've worked 12.5 hour long days for the last five years in my current job. It gives me the perfect work life balance. It works well for childcare, I have a number of days off where I can do as I wish, such as the time I spent volunteering for this site until last Xmas. In comparison, when I worked in theatres and had shorter shifts, my work life balance was ****. End up stuck in work late due to wards faffing about accepting patients from recovery etc.

Being a student nurse is hard work, along with being on placement full time, you have a load of competing priorities as well, such as assignments, exam prep, portfolio work. It gets easier on qualifying. You'll still have some stuff you need to do in your own time, such as course prep, revalidation, etc, but you'll have a lot more free time.

Considering dropping out of nursing degree

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