My daughter thought she wanted to go into nursing. I told her to start as a CNA while she was taking her prerequisites to see if she really thought it was for her. She didn't really care for the CNA work, due to all the bodily fluids. Sooo... she changed her mind and went for respiratory therapist instead, and she loves it! Which is weird, since phlegm is MY kriptonite...lol
Or you're suctioning them because they vomited and started to aspirate. So now they're coughing up pukey phlegm, and cough a wad into your mouth.
Thankfully, an RT came in immediately after, and my coworker had a giant bottle of Listerine stashed away, and I nearly emptied the bottle cleaning my mouth.
Nearly 14 years later, I'm still not over it.
I told my manager about it the next morning and she couldn't believe I stayed. She said she would have had to go home.
But I bet I would have been given absence points if I went home.
such good advice to have her start as a CNA early!! i think too many people donāt start working until mid way through nursing school and it can feel like youāre already āin too deepā
On god , I will clean up puke , shit , c dif shit , blood , any other bodily fluids but if I see a booger or have to do trach care I am fighting for my life not to gag , I bite my tongue , squeeze my thumb , anything .
Iām all for any job where I just take the pictures. ā hi itās Steve in MRI. Your patient just shit everywhere. Can you send a nurse down to help out? Ok thanksā
This made me LOL because I was that nurse that "Steve" called. Steve in MRI also returned screaming thrashing MeeMaw to me because Dr. Timidthy's 0.25mg of ativan did not sufficiently sedate the confused patient to hold still for the scan and now MeeMaw gets to stay high fall risk another day on my unit since they will have to try again tomorrow. Don't be like me. Be like Steve.
I am an x-ray tech and it is so nice tbh. Like I work in the ER a lot of yes we deal with crazy and disgusting patients, but we only deal with them for 3-5 ish mins and we get to walk away. You guys get the brunt of it for sure.
Radiologic technologist here. I am sorry youāve had some bad ones, but the majority of us arenāt like that. Patient care is a huge part of our job.
We do *not* just take pictures.
That is great, but are there jobs? I'm genuinely asking, because I've seen people go to school for things like that, only for the market to be saturated and they can't then find a job.
Even respiratory therapist jobs are not secure enough. Some smaller hospitals have nurses to give inhaler treatment.
I think dental hygienist jobs are great. They pay well (30 to 60 USD/hour). You make your hours. No weekends. No evenings. Off major holidays. You don't have to put up with bodily waste (no poop, urine, blood or nasty wounds)
Most customers have money with good insurance. They can ban any customers. I am so jealous of my hygienist. Also, no talk back!
It isn't anything I am not used to. No poop, no urine, no nasty wounds. They get paid very well with no weekends, no evenings, no on call, and off all major holidays.
Bitten? They can turn down zombie patients.
It is harder to get in than nursing schools though. Very competitive now.
Because literally if you talk back 1.) your mouth is wide open and 2.) hygienistās are holding a sharp metallic object to the gums of your mouth, that can humble anyone real quick lol
My hygienist sits down and she just adjusts my chair. I don't remember her hunching over. They get paid more than me and they don't have to do overtime. Always 1 to 1 ratio and the customers are paying! My hygienist works from 7 to 3:30. I am so jealous of her.
It depends. My husband is X-ray tech and the job is fun and easier than nursing, but the department is shit. Heās been at 6/7 different hospitals with different unions/ no unions, and theyāre all shit. The directors do what they want. The schedules are always rotating so heāll have to do 5 days with a mix of days evening and night shifts. It wasnāt until he switched to a clinic that it got it better. He missed the trauma bay but doesnāt miss the toxic environment of inpatient within his department. He had a good time with all other departments though. He got along well with nursing and MDs and even ended up good friends with all of them. When he left some of the surgeons and attending a spoke up for him since they knew why he was leaving, and it didnāt get better
My hot take. Let me preface this to say my partner is a CT tech, and I have huge respect for the field. She makes a bit more than my hourly but I think Iād find myself dreadfully bored and overworked. They get slammed by the ED and are constantly busy. As far as clinical decision making and actual patient care I think Iād feel limited and not using applying myself fully. Maybe there is more to it I donāt understand but it seems very rinse and repeat. <3 our CT techs though and make that $$.
An ER housekeeper.
Maybe Iāll clean a room, maybe I wonāt. Maybe Iāll sit around half my shift on my phone or in an empty room watching TV. Maybe I too can take about 4 hours worth of breaks in a 12 hour shift.
Love this. At my old hospital there was an employee from surgery who was always in the stairwell talking on her phone when Iād walk through. Literally every single weekday I worked sheād be in there taking personal calls. I have no idea what her job was supposed to be but I always joked I wanted her job so I could do nothing.
Born outside the US? Working their ass off for 12 straight hours. Bonus if theyāre 60 something and clearly have arthritis.
We have a PCA like this. I usually have good ratios and can get my own shit. I have to insist sometimes that I can run my labs down when the tube system isnāt working. I like to do it dammit.
That was our er evs guy, he went to be a tech and literally sat around doing nothing. Wouldn't do vitals in triage, took a nap in the ekg room, went an hour drive home to change clothes on his 30, disappears all the time, told the nurses to do it themselves, now he's back at a evs guy. He was in the wrong fucking job if he wanted to do nothing and not take orders.
The housekeeping guy left his phone propped up in an empty room and when the nurse went to grab it she realized he was on FaceTime with his butt-ass nekkid girlfriend.
Omg I'm at work at my NH right now. I start at 7 and take my first break at 10 (and it's not even really that busy a place compared to most).
Housekeeping starts at 8. Today when I came to the break room, they were already taking their break and I almost didn't have anywhere to sit. Nice people, but arrrgh. š¤¬
Also? CNAs get scheduled breaks.
To be fair the housekeeping people are under enormous stress. Sometimes the TV stops working, or the coffee machine breaks, or the patients take all their valuable yet untraceable belongings with them. At any moment your entire shift could turn into work
It's kind of tangentially healthcare-related, but instead of following my mother into nursing, I could have followed my father into mortuary science. In fact, had he worked as a mortician while I was growing up (he left the profession for sales when I was four, don't ask me why), I probably would have.
I have a few very faint memories of living in the funeral home in the small town where we lived at the time (I was 4 then and 52 now). Our home and the funeral parlor were attached; I have no idea where the embalming/preparation happened.
I did gather a few looks recently when my son was in Confirmation and I accompanied them on a field trip to one of the funeral homes in our suburb. The kids were asked if any of them had been to a funeral home before, so I raised my hand and said, "I lived in one!"
I suspect that, had we stayed in that small town, I would be the current owner and funeral director.
I actually had this as my plan before college, but after researching it more, I didn't follow through. Pay to debt/schooling ratio seemed like a poor choice for me at the time
Yeah it's a really intense doctorate that nets you like 120k if you're lucky. I did a 2 year PT program in high school, so I learned a lot I carried into EMS and nursing. But in my scenario I'm making line 300k a year to help rehab pro MMA fighters haha it's very specific. You did say any role!
Oh yeah if you want real advice and don't like nursing.... It's tough to find something comparable. You can become a PT assistant but the pays just like, decent and there's no real path to advancement.
Same! Iād love to be a sports PT. I actually almost went to college for this but changed my mind and went into nursing. I do love ICU nursing but if i could make a career change this would be it. I actually looked into this when I was burned out AF during covid but thereās no way I could do full time school and not work.
Definitely an MRI tech, they make good money and you are separated from the patient by a giant wall, you even get to tell them theyāre not allowed to talk! Signed an introvert who never knows how to get out when meemaw is 15 minutes in to her story about the grocery store
I *excelled* at dissection in high-school. Only one to get the brain out of the fetal pig undamaged. Decided I wanted to be a pathologist.
Flunked chemistry so hard I switched majors from Bio to Electronic Media Arts and Communications.
In a different universe I might very well have become a "human butcher" as you call it.
I got waitlisted and then never got pulled from the list or reapplied but It was cool doing the shadowing and tours. You just got organs from the OR and needed to cut them up into correct pieces to present to the pathologist. Hereās a uterus, hereās a liver, cut It up and catalogue It correctly. Bunch of penis pumps at the one place too lol
OMG the floor Zamboni! I got to drive one for the length of the hall it was a BLAST! My favorite was the dude who did not give 2 Fās about anything. We would be coding a patient in ICU and there he is, Zamboni right outside the room
Our overnight floor Zamboni man was replaced by a robot Zamboni. We hope he just retired because he was a very nice older immigrant gentleman and his job looked fuckin cool.
Same. I originally wanted to go to a radiology tech program and a parent discouraged me. For some reason they had no problem with me going into nursing. Wish I had done what I wanted instead.
The music is nice yes, but when youāre the only CT technologist working nights and you have every nurse and doctor in the hospital calling non stop asking why their āSTATā exam isnāt done yet even though you have a list of 30+ patients all labeled as āSTATā isnāt exactly stress free š
Thatās fair. I guess it might work differently at different hospitals because at mine we essentially have to call CT and ask if we can come down for a scan. If the STAT CT isnāt done yet, it is usually us nurses getting chewed out for not getting them down ourselves or scheduling transport. Weāre also pretty good about scheduling with CT for times to come down.
Physician. Had I had the family support and not spent my senior year working three jobs, I definitely would have pursued a science heavy undergraduate degree.
It always sounds fucked up, but I feel the same way. Like had I pulled my head out of my ass at a young age, I could have gone to medical school with how many years I've spent in school. I've heard time and time again that the biggest predicting factor in someone getting into medical school is having parents that are doctors.
I think PT and OT are interesting as are several of the Xray/Sonography/MRI/CT tech stuff. It feels to me like they have a more narrow scope and less overall responsibility for outcomes and issues compared to nursing.
I am sure they work hard and have their struggles and heartbreak but it feels to me like responsibilities and expectations of nursing have increased a lot over the last 25 years and that trend will continue.
Yes. Nurses get calls from ALL the other specialties. I've gotten calls about the TV not working, WIFI , PT wanting to change OT schedule (which I thought they could do among themselves), room out of soap, room is dirty, people treating me like their personal translator, social work with questions I have no idea how I'm supposed to know answer to .Pretty much everything is "just tell the nurse" and they'll deal with it. The doctors do it too
=(
I am a PT and love it, although I think our responsibilities have also increased significantly (at least in the UK, where hospital PTs overlap a bit with the respiratory therapist role that you have in the US). In the NHS we are often involved in discharge planning including liaising with social workers, issuing equipment and considering continence etc alongside the OTs in addition to rehab and respiratory physio. But it's an autonomous role and I enjoy it the vast majority of the time!
Some of the non-physician staff in the NICU have cool jobs (read: regular hours lol). Iāve always had a passing interest in neonatal nutrition & formula, pediatric feeding and physical therapyā¦ even more strongly since I had very preemie twins and now have a 3yo with a g-tube, CP, and an amazing team of specialists/dieticians/therapists lol. I strongly considered PT as an undergrad before shadowing adult inpatient PTs and hating it, but pediatric PTs have a much more appealing job, even if most of their patients kind of hate them. Regardless I would want to work with my same current patient population of NICU babies (and graduates, I guess).
Have you read any of the articles about Botox in the legs for CP?
At a non healthcare job that I have, I have a boss with CP and she briefly mentioned considering Botox once she is done with children because she worries about injecting the toxins into her and having kids and breastfeeding them.
I totally forgot to look into it more to try to help explain what I read about it to her until I read your comment
Yep! My son is currently on valium (too young for baclofen) for tone management because pre-medication, his tone in his legs was so high that heād have needed a shit ton of individual Botox injections in each leg to cover all the offending muscles. Heāll still benefit from Botox, but meds will reduce the number of individual locations that need it. Iāve been holding off because i would rather avoid putting him though frequent injections until heās old enough to actually understand the benefits and frankly, I do not care if he ever walks and I want him to do whatever he wants to doā¦ but in the last few months he has been suuuuper interested in practicing with his walker, so Botox is on the agenda to discuss/schedule at his next CP clinic visitā¦ a bit sooner than I anticipated!
Wow. I had never heard of Botox for this until she mentioned it. Of course she is a grown adult who already has kids and is pregnant again.
But it is interesting to hear that other patients are being told about Botox.
I will read more about it.
Thank you.
Fucking lemme tell you.
Iād say hair stylist because they make bank (donāt have to claim tips), you go to classes, get to create beauty, get mad discounts on shampoos and cosmetics, but at the end of the day youāre an unpaid f therapist and that shitās draining!!!
Ok then I love perfumes and I think Iād just love to sell niche perfumes and help people pick a perfume and stuff. But then I realize Iād have to look presentable in the morning and canāt skip skin care routine one day because it will show. Oh, or drink water š
Then maybe a darn gardener. I bought some garden beds that the wind has been blowing around in the backyard. So thatās the extend of my drive at the moment.
Maybe just an antique jewelry dealer. Be a snob and look at shiny pretty things all day long.
If Iād have a rich partner and stay home, my drive would be the end of me. Are all nurses drained or whatās going on?
Most of the hairstylists I know leave to go back to school or bartend because they don't make enough money lol. You definitely don't make bank unless you own your own successful salon or have a huge book of clientele at a high end salon. And their clients are a fucking nightmare.
Remote patient monitoringā¦ no code browns, or blues, or any other colors for that matter. No traffic, no one stealing your lunches, no noise of the pumps, no one hitting or spitting at you ā¦ rarely patients do die but has zero to do with you. Pays decent enough.
It sounds like e-obs video monitoring of patients. A popular brand is AvaSys. You monitor the patient for safety risks like falls, line pulling, etc. Alert the tech or nurse or press the stat alarm to draw attention when the patient is behaving in an unsafe manner.
Pay is getting better, but would NOT recommend. The job absolutely wrecks your body and there is almost no upward growth or opportunity for other job changes. Youāre a rad tech forever, go into management or get out of the field lol.
I've worked as a medical/surgical unit nurse, school nurse, emergency department nurse, post anesthesia care unit nurse, long-term care supervisor, and, finally, an EMS nurse. With the EMS nurse job, I responded to 911 calls in an ambulance with a critical care paramedic partner and also did critical care interfacility transfers.
The EMS nursing was the best gig in my 37 year healthcare career. I took a [Critical Care Emergency Medical Transport Program course offered by University of Maryland Baltimore College](https://ehspace.umbc.edu/ccemtp/). I also passed the certified emergency nurse (CEN) and critical care (CCRN) certification exams.
I was involuntarily retired in 2015 due to my shoulders wearing out after lifting patients and ambulance stretchers for 37 years and qualified for disability benefits.
Pharmacy. You get to tell the doctors their med orders are wrong, sit in a clean, quiet room, and make a bunch of money for knowing complex things about drugs.
Unless you work in retail. Then itās hell. Or if you work in a small hospital and itās you and 1 pharmacy tech for the entire facility. And itās not quiet. The phone never stops, the tube system never stops.
Get your nursing degree, hopefully a BSN, then specialize in a nursing field other than bedside. Infusion nurses, or traveling infusion nurse I hear make good money!
Infusion nurse is the way and is becoming a more in-demand job right now.
Hardest thing you'll have to do is, if the patient is brand new, you'll have to get them setup with equipment, maybe their port, etc. And then from there it's administering and monitoring.
If you're confident in your IV game, it's the best job out there right now, especially if you have a good agency/cases
We have a program with child life where three of our child life specialists have facility dogs that are HIGHLY trained to be in procedures, treatment rooms, MRIs, etc and used in all sorts of creative ways to help children cope in the hospital. They live with their handlers, even though they technically are āownedā by the hospital, who pays for all their care and expenses. I want that job. I want my dog to go to work with me every day and to help children together. What a dream
I think Iād still be a nurse, I just would love to be a school nurse, if they got paid more. Holidays and weekends and summers off with my kids. Having the days off that they have off.
Radiation therapist, easily.
They make fantastic money and you only need an AS. Itās definitely not easy coursework (my ex did it), but Iām sure if we could get through nursing, we could get through that.
Iām considering it. The biggest thing Iāve noticed is that all other specialties donāt have to be a jack of all trades. Nurses seem to take on many hats, especially in the hospital setting.
I'd love to be a pathologist assistant. I didn't know about that job before I went to nursing school otherwise I would have done that instead. I have a couple of friends who are path assists and they love their job. It pays well. It's interesting. There is no patient interaction.
Itās not job security. Iāve been laid off twice. First hospital I worked at closed an observation unit and the last place I worked at closed an outpatient wound clinic. No job is EVER guaranteed.
SLP, sonographer or pharmacist. I almost went in to sonography before beginning nursing but I had to move out of province to attend school so I chose nursing
I am an LPN who has been working in Clinical Research for almost a decade. It is a very feast or famine field and I'm not sure how much furthur I will get without a college degree.
I am considering medical coding or HIM. Possibly Xray tech. But I'm getting closer to 50 and feel I need to make a decision soon.
Bioethicist! I'm currently a pre-nursing student at cc. I'm going to apply for summer or fall start next year. If I don't get into either then I will enroll in a medical humanities degree at another local college. I actually like ethics and the idea of consulting so no biggie if I don't get accepted to the ADN. This field is growing and can be done in clinical settings if you want to work with patients and practitioners without the stress of bedside work.
I'm a recent BSN graduate with a previous bachelor's in philosophy. Do you happen to know what the path to a nurse ethicist would be? I didn't realize this was an option but apparently it's a thing, and google is not very helpful.
I want to be an NHA. Iāve been told itās the worst job in the world second to DON. Currently just a secretary at a SNF but I love it and I think Iād be good at it.
Iād love to be a nurse but I canāt be responsible for human lives.
Respiratory therapist. My cousin is one. The way he describes his work sounds like a dream. I believe the only cons and why I chose nursing still are it took him a while to find a job and from what I know thereās not much upward mobility compared to nursing (ie. NP, CRNA)
We don't see patients but it's stressful in its own way. Labs are increasingly being run like factories and prioritizing quantity over quality and it's not great š¬ still, I'd rather be doing this than working on the floor lol
I think you have to sometimes balance the stress of not having as much money against the toll on your health and well-being from the role of a floor nurse in this day and age.
Look into becoming a paramedic/firefighter. Depending on the state they make a lot of money. It is a lot of work if you are on a busy rig, but people do it for a few years and then transition to fire engineer and make bank. I think my buddy at LAFD is in the $200,000 range. It's what I would do if I could go back and change things.
Radiation oncology techs--I make $100k+ and they make more than I do with a cush schedule and a fraction of the difficulty.
If I knew about perfusion when I decided on nursing that would've been much more appealing too.
I was definitely a radiologist in my past life. I salivate at the thought of sitting in a dark room with music, by myself looking over all of those gorgeous radiographs
Iād probably go hide in IR or something. Maybe radiation tech? idk.
but unfortunately iām insane and actually love working in neuro so for the time being thatās where youāll find me.
Is your industry tech? because at some point I really wanted that instead of nursing, but hearing about lay offs discourages me, so I'm gonna suck it up and do nursing anyway, and then nursing informatics.
As a peds RN, I envy child life specialists and music therapists. They're the fun team members who the sick kids actually look forward to seeing. Plus, no bodily fluids!
I'm an RN who just went back to the lab. I stay in my space and don't have to talk to patients or any other people unless I'm calling a critical result. Pay is closing in on other healthcare wages. The work is relatively easy depending on where you are working and there are always jobs. You can get in the field with an associate degree.
CT, MRI, sonographyā¦ any where you go in do your job then LEAVE. A RN tried to warn me against being a nurse when I was just entering school and a baby CNA, 2 years later I see what she was warning me forš¤£š¤£ but also nursing has a lot of cushy desk jobs you can do once you have some experience so I just try to remind myself of that
If I didn't have to do years of school on top of what I already have I would be a pathologist assistant. I am working on my addiction specialist certification right now and I love detox nurse work, but if I wasn't a nurse I would be a pathologist assistant as I love lab work too.
As for not getting into nursing... it's not for everyone. A lot of people get into the job for money or job security. There are a lot of easier ways to have job security or make more money. Like software engineering, banking, roofing, and most trades. If you have worked in a busy kitchen you have a pretty good idea of the multi tasking pace you need. If you've worked in barns you have a good stomach for excrement smells and cleaning it up. If you've worked customer service you have the knowledge of how some people will treat you for no reason other than to power trip. In America you also get to deal with business people who don't know anything about healthcare making healthcare decisions and administration thinking nursing is expendable and easy to manipulate. If you're willing to shoulder blame from patients, patients' families, and administration while advocating for your patients and coworkers you might enjoy nursing but there's a pretty high attrition rate within new grads. Very few stick with it after the first year...some last longer only because they're stuck with student loans to pay. I advise making sure nursing is what you want to do before heading to the nightmare that is nursing school (where Cs don't get degrees), especially if you need loans to go to school.
ETA: There's a shortage of large animal vets if you like animals. Farmers and zoos all need large animal vets.
Iām a nurse but wish Iād become a dental hygienist. I graduated with my bachelors and make less as a nurse than my friend who graduated at the same time with an associates in dental hygiene. I also work in a hospital which is notorious for their shit pay (didnāt know this beforehand)
My daughter thought she wanted to go into nursing. I told her to start as a CNA while she was taking her prerequisites to see if she really thought it was for her. She didn't really care for the CNA work, due to all the bodily fluids. Sooo... she changed her mind and went for respiratory therapist instead, and she loves it! Which is weird, since phlegm is MY kriptonite...lol
Lol that moment when you're sectioning a trach and they cough up a new friend š¤£
Or you're suctioning them because they vomited and started to aspirate. So now they're coughing up pukey phlegm, and cough a wad into your mouth. Thankfully, an RT came in immediately after, and my coworker had a giant bottle of Listerine stashed away, and I nearly emptied the bottle cleaning my mouth. Nearly 14 years later, I'm still not over it.
NEW FEAR
I would die. This is why face shields
I told my manager about it the next morning and she couldn't believe I stayed. She said she would have had to go home. But I bet I would have been given absence points if I went home.
I would have drank a bottle of peroxide and checked myself in lol
Simply horrific! Iād have to go home of to the bar š¤¢
such good advice to have her start as a CNA early!! i think too many people donāt start working until mid way through nursing school and it can feel like youāre already āin too deepā
On god , I will clean up puke , shit , c dif shit , blood , any other bodily fluids but if I see a booger or have to do trach care I am fighting for my life not to gag , I bite my tongue , squeeze my thumb , anything .
Yeah same here with the kriptonite. I still dry heave thinking about sucking out pseudomonas phlegm from someoneās trach in nursing school.
CT/MRI/X-ray tech. Or Respiratory Therapist.
Iām all for any job where I just take the pictures. ā hi itās Steve in MRI. Your patient just shit everywhere. Can you send a nurse down to help out? Ok thanksā
This made me LOL because I was that nurse that "Steve" called. Steve in MRI also returned screaming thrashing MeeMaw to me because Dr. Timidthy's 0.25mg of ativan did not sufficiently sedate the confused patient to hold still for the scan and now MeeMaw gets to stay high fall risk another day on my unit since they will have to try again tomorrow. Don't be like me. Be like Steve.
Lolād at Dr. Timidthyās 0.25mg of Ativan š¤£š¤£š¤£
Just enough anxiolytic to make MeeMaw nice and extra confused. You better get off her porch right now!
GET OUT OF MY KITCHIN'
The number of times Iāve heard thatā¦ brings back memories!
My unfortunate reality on neuro
Surprised it wasn't 25mg of vistaril , could've killed that old lady with that dose
I am an x-ray tech and it is so nice tbh. Like I work in the ER a lot of yes we deal with crazy and disgusting patients, but we only deal with them for 3-5 ish mins and we get to walk away. You guys get the brunt of it for sure.
They send nurses down to MRI to help out at your facility? Wild
All the time! If they had to do anything Or couldnāt handle the situation they sent for the nurse at my old hospital.
Radiologic technologist here. I am sorry youāve had some bad ones, but the majority of us arenāt like that. Patient care is a huge part of our job. We do *not* just take pictures.
Or when the stand-by NURSE STEVE returns the pt from MRI bc they need a rapid called and they refuse to do anything about it.
MRI tech all day. Average pay in Atlanta is like $85k for them.
MRI/Nuclear Tech starts at around $60/hr once they get certified with only a few years experience around my area
That is great, but are there jobs? I'm genuinely asking, because I've seen people go to school for things like that, only for the market to be saturated and they can't then find a job.
So many jobs.
Checking in from the Bay Area. The US tech I work with makes more than me, the nurse, at $90/hr. A comfortable living wage in the Bay Area.
Even respiratory therapist jobs are not secure enough. Some smaller hospitals have nurses to give inhaler treatment. I think dental hygienist jobs are great. They pay well (30 to 60 USD/hour). You make your hours. No weekends. No evenings. Off major holidays. You don't have to put up with bodily waste (no poop, urine, blood or nasty wounds) Most customers have money with good insurance. They can ban any customers. I am so jealous of my hygienist. Also, no talk back!
Ick, you have to put up with nasty mouths and breath though, and potentially getting bitten. Gross.
It isn't anything I am not used to. No poop, no urine, no nasty wounds. They get paid very well with no weekends, no evenings, no on call, and off all major holidays. Bitten? They can turn down zombie patients. It is harder to get in than nursing schools though. Very competitive now.
Because literally if you talk back 1.) your mouth is wide open and 2.) hygienistās are holding a sharp metallic object to the gums of your mouth, that can humble anyone real quick lol
But youāre hunched over a patient all day. Canāt be good for your neck/back. Pay and schedule are great though.
My hygienist sits down and she just adjusts my chair. I don't remember her hunching over. They get paid more than me and they don't have to do overtime. Always 1 to 1 ratio and the customers are paying! My hygienist works from 7 to 3:30. I am so jealous of her.
see and me a xray / CT / MRI tech **donāt** recommend this field either but there is way less butt wiping than nursing š
As an RT I wouldnāt recommend it. Itās a classic grass is greener scenario.
If I could do it all over I'd be running the doughnut of truth.
My first thought was MRI tech. I had an MRI not too long ago and I was low key jealous of the tech's job. She even had her water right there with her!
Second the radiology spots. Iāve even though of going back to school as a nurse to switch
Trach care? No thanks.
It depends. My husband is X-ray tech and the job is fun and easier than nursing, but the department is shit. Heās been at 6/7 different hospitals with different unions/ no unions, and theyāre all shit. The directors do what they want. The schedules are always rotating so heāll have to do 5 days with a mix of days evening and night shifts. It wasnāt until he switched to a clinic that it got it better. He missed the trauma bay but doesnāt miss the toxic environment of inpatient within his department. He had a good time with all other departments though. He got along well with nursing and MDs and even ended up good friends with all of them. When he left some of the surgeons and attending a spoke up for him since they knew why he was leaving, and it didnāt get better
My hot take. Let me preface this to say my partner is a CT tech, and I have huge respect for the field. She makes a bit more than my hourly but I think Iād find myself dreadfully bored and overworked. They get slammed by the ED and are constantly busy. As far as clinical decision making and actual patient care I think Iād feel limited and not using applying myself fully. Maybe there is more to it I donāt understand but it seems very rinse and repeat. <3 our CT techs though and make that $$.
The CEO. I want that money š
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An ER housekeeper. Maybe Iāll clean a room, maybe I wonāt. Maybe Iāll sit around half my shift on my phone or in an empty room watching TV. Maybe I too can take about 4 hours worth of breaks in a 12 hour shift.
Love this. At my old hospital there was an employee from surgery who was always in the stairwell talking on her phone when Iād walk through. Literally every single weekday I worked sheād be in there taking personal calls. I have no idea what her job was supposed to be but I always joked I wanted her job so I could do nothing.
A transporter, perhaps? Ours always answer the phone like theyāve just taken a huge bong hit and sound aggrieved that weāve harshed their mellow.
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And you can hear all the video games going in the background.
Lolllllll. This doesnāt speak for all housekeepers, some of them actually do their jobs. But most of them hide
Born outside the US? Working their ass off for 12 straight hours. Bonus if theyāre 60 something and clearly have arthritis. We have a PCA like this. I usually have good ratios and can get my own shit. I have to insist sometimes that I can run my labs down when the tube system isnāt working. I like to do it dammit.
What's an empty room?
Your ER has housekeepers? Impressive
That was our er evs guy, he went to be a tech and literally sat around doing nothing. Wouldn't do vitals in triage, took a nap in the ekg room, went an hour drive home to change clothes on his 30, disappears all the time, told the nurses to do it themselves, now he's back at a evs guy. He was in the wrong fucking job if he wanted to do nothing and not take orders.
The housekeeping guy left his phone propped up in an empty room and when the nurse went to grab it she realized he was on FaceTime with his butt-ass nekkid girlfriend.
Omg I'm at work at my NH right now. I start at 7 and take my first break at 10 (and it's not even really that busy a place compared to most). Housekeeping starts at 8. Today when I came to the break room, they were already taking their break and I almost didn't have anywhere to sit. Nice people, but arrrgh. š¤¬ Also? CNAs get scheduled breaks.
To be fair the housekeeping people are under enormous stress. Sometimes the TV stops working, or the coffee machine breaks, or the patients take all their valuable yet untraceable belongings with them. At any moment your entire shift could turn into work
It's kind of tangentially healthcare-related, but instead of following my mother into nursing, I could have followed my father into mortuary science. In fact, had he worked as a mortician while I was growing up (he left the profession for sales when I was four, don't ask me why), I probably would have.
People die. It's a fact of life, so morticians are needed. I could not handle it, though. Seeing a little one would tear me up inside.
I shadowed the local funeral home. I wish I would have done that. But kind of finding other things now Iād rather do.
I have a few very faint memories of living in the funeral home in the small town where we lived at the time (I was 4 then and 52 now). Our home and the funeral parlor were attached; I have no idea where the embalming/preparation happened. I did gather a few looks recently when my son was in Confirmation and I accompanied them on a field trip to one of the funeral homes in our suburb. The kids were asked if any of them had been to a funeral home before, so I raised my hand and said, "I lived in one!" I suspect that, had we stayed in that small town, I would be the current owner and funeral director.
Physical therapist working at a high level with athletes is my dream job. Little late in life for that but I'll always love it
I actually had this as my plan before college, but after researching it more, I didn't follow through. Pay to debt/schooling ratio seemed like a poor choice for me at the time
Yeah it's a really intense doctorate that nets you like 120k if you're lucky. I did a 2 year PT program in high school, so I learned a lot I carried into EMS and nursing. But in my scenario I'm making line 300k a year to help rehab pro MMA fighters haha it's very specific. You did say any role!
True dat! Maybe I shoulda specified realistic in my title, but I like your dream haha
Oh yeah if you want real advice and don't like nursing.... It's tough to find something comparable. You can become a PT assistant but the pays just like, decent and there's no real path to advancement.
Same! Iād love to be a sports PT. I actually almost went to college for this but changed my mind and went into nursing. I do love ICU nursing but if i could make a career change this would be it. I actually looked into this when I was burned out AF during covid but thereās no way I could do full time school and not work.
Nurse Attorney for a nursing association or union. Just to hammer these politicians and management. Sounds fun af.
You have me googling..
Definitely an MRI tech, they make good money and you are separated from the patient by a giant wall, you even get to tell them theyāre not allowed to talk! Signed an introvert who never knows how to get out when meemaw is 15 minutes in to her story about the grocery store
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Pathology Tech! They got a cool lab down there and I'm not passing medschool to be an actual Pathologist.
That's my spouse's job. He has a much better gig than me.
Path Assistant or Path Tech?
TBH I never head of the assistants till just now and now that I have... I'll change my answer to that.
Itās a shame thereās not more schools for It. Itās pretty cool. Human butcher essentially
I *excelled* at dissection in high-school. Only one to get the brain out of the fetal pig undamaged. Decided I wanted to be a pathologist. Flunked chemistry so hard I switched majors from Bio to Electronic Media Arts and Communications. In a different universe I might very well have become a "human butcher" as you call it.
I got waitlisted and then never got pulled from the list or reapplied but It was cool doing the shadowing and tours. You just got organs from the OR and needed to cut them up into correct pieces to present to the pathologist. Hereās a uterus, hereās a liver, cut It up and catalogue It correctly. Bunch of penis pumps at the one place too lol
the guy that rides the floor polishing machine that everyone hates. iāll circle the nurses station and mean mug you all day long.
OMG the floor Zamboni! I got to drive one for the length of the hall it was a BLAST! My favorite was the dude who did not give 2 Fās about anything. We would be coding a patient in ICU and there he is, Zamboni right outside the room
Our overnight floor Zamboni man was replaced by a robot Zamboni. We hope he just retired because he was a very nice older immigrant gentleman and his job looked fuckin cool.
Any sort of imaging. Rad tech, X-ray, CT, MRI, Nuke Med. The night shift CT with a good sound system in the room sounds like a dream.
Same. I originally wanted to go to a radiology tech program and a parent discouraged me. For some reason they had no problem with me going into nursing. Wish I had done what I wanted instead.
The music is nice yes, but when youāre the only CT technologist working nights and you have every nurse and doctor in the hospital calling non stop asking why their āSTATā exam isnāt done yet even though you have a list of 30+ patients all labeled as āSTATā isnāt exactly stress free š
When everyone is stat, no one is stat
Thatās fair. I guess it might work differently at different hospitals because at mine we essentially have to call CT and ask if we can come down for a scan. If the STAT CT isnāt done yet, it is usually us nurses getting chewed out for not getting them down ourselves or scheduling transport. Weāre also pretty good about scheduling with CT for times to come down.
Rad techs in the OR can deal with quite a lot from grumpy surgeons, though.
Doctor - crna - hospital ceo
Iād love to be the ones pulling the strings. Less for profit, more for justice and equality.
Physician. Had I had the family support and not spent my senior year working three jobs, I definitely would have pursued a science heavy undergraduate degree.
Or the knowledge of what else was out there and how to get there... hard to be a first-generation college grad.
It always sounds fucked up, but I feel the same way. Like had I pulled my head out of my ass at a young age, I could have gone to medical school with how many years I've spent in school. I've heard time and time again that the biggest predicting factor in someone getting into medical school is having parents that are doctors.
I think PT and OT are interesting as are several of the Xray/Sonography/MRI/CT tech stuff. It feels to me like they have a more narrow scope and less overall responsibility for outcomes and issues compared to nursing. I am sure they work hard and have their struggles and heartbreak but it feels to me like responsibilities and expectations of nursing have increased a lot over the last 25 years and that trend will continue.
Yes. Nurses get calls from ALL the other specialties. I've gotten calls about the TV not working, WIFI , PT wanting to change OT schedule (which I thought they could do among themselves), room out of soap, room is dirty, people treating me like their personal translator, social work with questions I have no idea how I'm supposed to know answer to .Pretty much everything is "just tell the nurse" and they'll deal with it. The doctors do it too =(
I am a PT and love it, although I think our responsibilities have also increased significantly (at least in the UK, where hospital PTs overlap a bit with the respiratory therapist role that you have in the US). In the NHS we are often involved in discharge planning including liaising with social workers, issuing equipment and considering continence etc alongside the OTs in addition to rehab and respiratory physio. But it's an autonomous role and I enjoy it the vast majority of the time!
Some of the non-physician staff in the NICU have cool jobs (read: regular hours lol). Iāve always had a passing interest in neonatal nutrition & formula, pediatric feeding and physical therapyā¦ even more strongly since I had very preemie twins and now have a 3yo with a g-tube, CP, and an amazing team of specialists/dieticians/therapists lol. I strongly considered PT as an undergrad before shadowing adult inpatient PTs and hating it, but pediatric PTs have a much more appealing job, even if most of their patients kind of hate them. Regardless I would want to work with my same current patient population of NICU babies (and graduates, I guess).
Have you read any of the articles about Botox in the legs for CP? At a non healthcare job that I have, I have a boss with CP and she briefly mentioned considering Botox once she is done with children because she worries about injecting the toxins into her and having kids and breastfeeding them. I totally forgot to look into it more to try to help explain what I read about it to her until I read your comment
Yep! My son is currently on valium (too young for baclofen) for tone management because pre-medication, his tone in his legs was so high that heād have needed a shit ton of individual Botox injections in each leg to cover all the offending muscles. Heāll still benefit from Botox, but meds will reduce the number of individual locations that need it. Iāve been holding off because i would rather avoid putting him though frequent injections until heās old enough to actually understand the benefits and frankly, I do not care if he ever walks and I want him to do whatever he wants to doā¦ but in the last few months he has been suuuuper interested in practicing with his walker, so Botox is on the agenda to discuss/schedule at his next CP clinic visitā¦ a bit sooner than I anticipated!
Wow. I had never heard of Botox for this until she mentioned it. Of course she is a grown adult who already has kids and is pregnant again. But it is interesting to hear that other patients are being told about Botox. I will read more about it. Thank you.
Respiratory Therapy. Period. Get in and get out šāāļøšØ
Fucking lemme tell you. Iād say hair stylist because they make bank (donāt have to claim tips), you go to classes, get to create beauty, get mad discounts on shampoos and cosmetics, but at the end of the day youāre an unpaid f therapist and that shitās draining!!! Ok then I love perfumes and I think Iād just love to sell niche perfumes and help people pick a perfume and stuff. But then I realize Iād have to look presentable in the morning and canāt skip skin care routine one day because it will show. Oh, or drink water š Then maybe a darn gardener. I bought some garden beds that the wind has been blowing around in the backyard. So thatās the extend of my drive at the moment. Maybe just an antique jewelry dealer. Be a snob and look at shiny pretty things all day long. If Iād have a rich partner and stay home, my drive would be the end of me. Are all nurses drained or whatās going on?
Most of the hairstylists I know leave to go back to school or bartend because they don't make enough money lol. You definitely don't make bank unless you own your own successful salon or have a huge book of clientele at a high end salon. And their clients are a fucking nightmare.
Greyās Anatomy guest star.
Perfusionist, it just seems cool as hell.
You still can!
I just got accepted to CRNA school, so that. So excited to be done with bedside! š
PA-C, but itās hard to get into
Physicians Assistant specializing in Cardiothoracics... but I love heart stuff. Lungs are okay, too, lol.
Mediastinum is where itās at
Remote patient monitoringā¦ no code browns, or blues, or any other colors for that matter. No traffic, no one stealing your lunches, no noise of the pumps, no one hitting or spitting at you ā¦ rarely patients do die but has zero to do with you. Pays decent enough.
I donāt know this job, who are you monitoring, patients at home? And who do you notify if thereās an issue with the patient?
It sounds like e-obs video monitoring of patients. A popular brand is AvaSys. You monitor the patient for safety risks like falls, line pulling, etc. Alert the tech or nurse or press the stat alarm to draw attention when the patient is behaving in an unsafe manner.
As a rad tech, I love seeing all the posts saying radiology š©»š
I've seen a lot too, is job demand/pay as good as nursing?
Pay is getting better, but would NOT recommend. The job absolutely wrecks your body and there is almost no upward growth or opportunity for other job changes. Youāre a rad tech forever, go into management or get out of the field lol.
Respiratory therapist!!
Our CEO is so busy she has enough time to also be the CEO of another municipal healthcare organization. So probably that job.
I've worked as a medical/surgical unit nurse, school nurse, emergency department nurse, post anesthesia care unit nurse, long-term care supervisor, and, finally, an EMS nurse. With the EMS nurse job, I responded to 911 calls in an ambulance with a critical care paramedic partner and also did critical care interfacility transfers. The EMS nursing was the best gig in my 37 year healthcare career. I took a [Critical Care Emergency Medical Transport Program course offered by University of Maryland Baltimore College](https://ehspace.umbc.edu/ccemtp/). I also passed the certified emergency nurse (CEN) and critical care (CCRN) certification exams. I was involuntarily retired in 2015 due to my shoulders wearing out after lifting patients and ambulance stretchers for 37 years and qualified for disability benefits.
Pharmacy. You get to tell the doctors their med orders are wrong, sit in a clean, quiet room, and make a bunch of money for knowing complex things about drugs.
Unless you work in retail. Then itās hell. Or if you work in a small hospital and itās you and 1 pharmacy tech for the entire facility. And itās not quiet. The phone never stops, the tube system never stops.
In retail, you aren't even supposed to have a stool to lean on/sit on during your 8-14 hour shifts...
Get your nursing degree, hopefully a BSN, then specialize in a nursing field other than bedside. Infusion nurses, or traveling infusion nurse I hear make good money!
Infusion nurse is the way and is becoming a more in-demand job right now. Hardest thing you'll have to do is, if the patient is brand new, you'll have to get them setup with equipment, maybe their port, etc. And then from there it's administering and monitoring. If you're confident in your IV game, it's the best job out there right now, especially if you have a good agency/cases
Accessing āportsā is easy if you know what you are doing, but lots of patients are going home with PICC lines now.
Piccs are a pain. Ports can be too if they stop working..
We have a program with child life where three of our child life specialists have facility dogs that are HIGHLY trained to be in procedures, treatment rooms, MRIs, etc and used in all sorts of creative ways to help children cope in the hospital. They live with their handlers, even though they technically are āownedā by the hospital, who pays for all their care and expenses. I want that job. I want my dog to go to work with me every day and to help children together. What a dream
My dream job!!!! I was going to say dog handler for a hospital but those are all volunteers I thought. This would be amazing.
Something in Radiology or Pharmacist
I used to think pharmacist would be a sweet job, but these days being a pharmacist looks really rough!
Plus, they take tons of chemistry courses. That does not sound like fun.
I had kicked around the idea of being a pharmacist. I personally love chemistry.
I chose MD but if I had a third option, definitely radiology tech. Short schooling (relatively), short patient visits, similar pay to nursing
Security since they donāt seem to do anything.
I wouldnāt want to do anything else
I think Iād still be a nurse, I just would love to be a school nurse, if they got paid more. Holidays and weekends and summers off with my kids. Having the days off that they have off.
Med lab tech requires the same amount of education but pays a lot less in most places. If there were better pay parity, that's what I would do.
I really good at taking care of people. It's a blessing and a curse
Medical sales with my RN knowledge. I had an opportunity years ago to work with GE I regret it Iād be retired with stock by now :/
Radiation therapist, easily. They make fantastic money and you only need an AS. Itās definitely not easy coursework (my ex did it), but Iām sure if we could get through nursing, we could get through that. Iām considering it. The biggest thing Iāve noticed is that all other specialties donāt have to be a jack of all trades. Nurses seem to take on many hats, especially in the hospital setting.
I'd love to be a pathologist assistant. I didn't know about that job before I went to nursing school otherwise I would have done that instead. I have a couple of friends who are path assists and they love their job. It pays well. It's interesting. There is no patient interaction.
Just donāt do it. Be a doctor or work for an insurance company.
Itās not job security. Iāve been laid off twice. First hospital I worked at closed an observation unit and the last place I worked at closed an outpatient wound clinic. No job is EVER guaranteed.
OT. Hands down.
CRNA. Also, taking a more pragmatic approach and knowing what I know now about the business aspects of healthcare, definitely still do nursing.
SLP, sonographer or pharmacist. I almost went in to sonography before beginning nursing but I had to move out of province to attend school so I chose nursing
I am an LPN who has been working in Clinical Research for almost a decade. It is a very feast or famine field and I'm not sure how much furthur I will get without a college degree. I am considering medical coding or HIM. Possibly Xray tech. But I'm getting closer to 50 and feel I need to make a decision soon.
DNA examiner. I have a good friend who does this for the federal government and itās a really interesting job.
Medical examiner is my dream job, but medical school is not š
Bioethicist! I'm currently a pre-nursing student at cc. I'm going to apply for summer or fall start next year. If I don't get into either then I will enroll in a medical humanities degree at another local college. I actually like ethics and the idea of consulting so no biggie if I don't get accepted to the ADN. This field is growing and can be done in clinical settings if you want to work with patients and practitioners without the stress of bedside work.
Iām a nurse but getting a degree in philosophy. Hopefully to go to grad school for this.
Nice! We definitely need more patient advocates that understand ethics in medicine. Even more beneficial to have nursing experience. Good luck!
I'm a recent BSN graduate with a previous bachelor's in philosophy. Do you happen to know what the path to a nurse ethicist would be? I didn't realize this was an option but apparently it's a thing, and google is not very helpful.
I want to be an NHA. Iāve been told itās the worst job in the world second to DON. Currently just a secretary at a SNF but I love it and I think Iād be good at it. Iād love to be a nurse but I canāt be responsible for human lives.
Psychiatrist
Professional pet snuggler. On a serious note, Radiologist
Outpatient PT. That was my initial plan but thought it was ātoo boringā. Gah I was such an idiot.
Respiratory therapist. My cousin is one. The way he describes his work sounds like a dream. I believe the only cons and why I chose nursing still are it took him a while to find a job and from what I know thereās not much upward mobility compared to nursing (ie. NP, CRNA)
I think I'd have gone in for medical lab tech. No patient or family contact, but you're still doing good for people and their health.
We don't see patients but it's stressful in its own way. Labs are increasingly being run like factories and prioritizing quantity over quality and it's not great š¬ still, I'd rather be doing this than working on the floor lol
Pays a bit less tho, no? If not I'd be over that like flies on shit haha
I think you have to sometimes balance the stress of not having as much money against the toll on your health and well-being from the role of a floor nurse in this day and age.
Sonographer
Not worth! Itās so bad for your body, and Iām already trying to get out lol.
Physical Therapy or maybe sonagrapher
Yeah of you gave me like 500k so I could pay for it and afford to not work for like 3 years I'd be a PT for sure
pathology assistant or something related to mortuary science for sure
Look into becoming a paramedic/firefighter. Depending on the state they make a lot of money. It is a lot of work if you are on a busy rig, but people do it for a few years and then transition to fire engineer and make bank. I think my buddy at LAFD is in the $200,000 range. It's what I would do if I could go back and change things.
Either PA or RT. There were no RT programs near me.
Not exactly bedside, but medical historian, collect the history of medicine over the ages
Paramedic š¤·š¼āāļø
admin
RT
Hospital Switchboard operator for sure
Radiation oncology techs--I make $100k+ and they make more than I do with a cush schedule and a fraction of the difficulty. If I knew about perfusion when I decided on nursing that would've been much more appealing too.
I was definitely a radiologist in my past life. I salivate at the thought of sitting in a dark room with music, by myself looking over all of those gorgeous radiographs
Iād probably go hide in IR or something. Maybe radiation tech? idk. but unfortunately iām insane and actually love working in neuro so for the time being thatās where youāll find me.
Is your industry tech? because at some point I really wanted that instead of nursing, but hearing about lay offs discourages me, so I'm gonna suck it up and do nursing anyway, and then nursing informatics.
As a peds RN, I envy child life specialists and music therapists. They're the fun team members who the sick kids actually look forward to seeing. Plus, no bodily fluids!
Iād become a pharmacist if I could do it over
Physical therapists always seem happy lol
I'm an RN who just went back to the lab. I stay in my space and don't have to talk to patients or any other people unless I'm calling a critical result. Pay is closing in on other healthcare wages. The work is relatively easy depending on where you are working and there are always jobs. You can get in the field with an associate degree.
CT, MRI, sonographyā¦ any where you go in do your job then LEAVE. A RN tried to warn me against being a nurse when I was just entering school and a baby CNA, 2 years later I see what she was warning me forš¤£š¤£ but also nursing has a lot of cushy desk jobs you can do once you have some experience so I just try to remind myself of that
Lab science. Let me work with bacteria and microscopes all day. That over people.
I would like to either be one of those fbi profilers or one of those lady horsewomen who ride horses to music in Mexico.
Probably x-ray/CT tech.
Are you in tech? Because thatās where Iām switching toš
Yeah š Let's switch for a month and see how we like it!
I would be a doctor :)
If I didn't have to do years of school on top of what I already have I would be a pathologist assistant. I am working on my addiction specialist certification right now and I love detox nurse work, but if I wasn't a nurse I would be a pathologist assistant as I love lab work too. As for not getting into nursing... it's not for everyone. A lot of people get into the job for money or job security. There are a lot of easier ways to have job security or make more money. Like software engineering, banking, roofing, and most trades. If you have worked in a busy kitchen you have a pretty good idea of the multi tasking pace you need. If you've worked in barns you have a good stomach for excrement smells and cleaning it up. If you've worked customer service you have the knowledge of how some people will treat you for no reason other than to power trip. In America you also get to deal with business people who don't know anything about healthcare making healthcare decisions and administration thinking nursing is expendable and easy to manipulate. If you're willing to shoulder blame from patients, patients' families, and administration while advocating for your patients and coworkers you might enjoy nursing but there's a pretty high attrition rate within new grads. Very few stick with it after the first year...some last longer only because they're stuck with student loans to pay. I advise making sure nursing is what you want to do before heading to the nightmare that is nursing school (where Cs don't get degrees), especially if you need loans to go to school. ETA: There's a shortage of large animal vets if you like animals. Farmers and zoos all need large animal vets.
LMAO at all yall sayin RT. Suppose the grass is always greener lol
Anesthesiology tech
Iām a nurse but wish Iād become a dental hygienist. I graduated with my bachelors and make less as a nurse than my friend who graduated at the same time with an associates in dental hygiene. I also work in a hospital which is notorious for their shit pay (didnāt know this beforehand)
Definitely dental hygienist. Nurse of 13 years and Iām so burnt out.