From staff shortages to abusive patients and increasing burnout, nurses face some harsh working conditions, begging the question, why do so many students choose to pursue the profession?
“We do get yelled at. We do get confused patients. We do get spit at. But it’s a part of our job,” says Christine Lee. “Seeing people go home, seeing people get better, and also seeing people get worse. It’s just different from what normal people see.”
Lee is a nursing student at Mount Royal University and believes that there are so many common misconceptions about the program. She says that many people fear not finding a job after graduation, but in her experiences, she has never met another nursing student who wasn’t able to secure a job immediately.
More than changing diapers and feeding patients, Lee explains the rewarding feeling of helping people who can’t care for themselves. For many nurses, that’s more than enough to cope with some of the anxiety that comes with the work.
She says that one of the great things about nursing is the many different specialties students can choose to belong to from midwifery to cosmetics.
Although nursing is quite stigmatized, many individuals who want to work in healthcare are drawn to the chance of allowing another person to be more comfortable in a state of illness.
Ezra Quigley, a fourth-year nursing student at MRU, wants to make a difference in people’s lives. And while she enjoys the program, her biggest worry going into her career is burnout.
“I think that’s high on a lot of grads’ minds is that you work so hard for your four years, that your career just ends up being short-lived because you can’t take it anymore. For sure the people who were working during COVID probably felt that quite a bit,” she said.
According to a report conducted by the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU), four in 10 nurses plan to retire due to patient abuse and burnout. The study also concluded that 35 per cent of nurses just starting out in their careers regret working in the industry.
To Quigley, any occupation will come with obstacles that can be overcome. What’s most important is to work a job that you love. Because it’s such an intimate field of work, she believes being a people person is key.
“Nursing is very interpersonal profession and you are spending a lot of one-on-one time with your patients, even more so than your doctors,” she said. “You truly don’t understand what it’s like to be in the hospital at the bedside interacting with patients until you’re in it.”
