Friday, April 3, 2009

The Medical Profession

Though in my family there are already 4 lawyers and one is studying to be a nurse. So I hear and have studied some about this profession. If you can become a doctor or nurse you will never be without a job. However, becoming one is no easy task.

First of all, one must be very smart and very diligent. Just being very smart isn't enough to get through all the many rigors of the Nursing profession. If you want to be an RN with a Bachelor of Science then you must study your first two years of college toward your B.S. and then do another three years of nursing school.

Any nurse I talk to says that the three years of nursing school was the most awful experience of their lives. Many many nurses flunk out or are made to flunk out or are discriminated against(especially in these difficult economic times). When all the minorities got their rights it was in the late 1960s and very early 1970s. It just so happens that this was the most affluent of times for the middle and lower classes that the United States has ever seen and likely will ever see. So, giving people of all classes their rights was the right thing to do. However, now even the upper classes can't get jobs for their kids so all this has changed. And all people rich and poor are in a very difficult struggle to just survive. There just aren't enough jobs for everyone right now. So if you can get a job in the medical profession you will first have to get trained. And this is the most difficult part.

First of all, the problem is that to get college professors to teach medicine in nursing one has to hire nurses with a Master's Degree. However, in order to do this a nurse must first get his or her RN and then work 5 years as a nurse before he or she will be accepted into a Master's program. Then college teachers of nursing make about $60,000 a year and a nurse can make $80,000 a year even with just an RN. So there really is no motivation for nurses to become college teachers of nursing. So this is a very big problem for training new nurses. So the college teachers of nursing tend to be people no one wanted to work with as nurses or very dedicated nursing teachers who are willing to sacrifice money for teaching.

This problem also creates many sub problems such as extremely long waiting lists to get into nursing school. I know of one person who waited 6 years to get into a community college program for nursing(and still didn't get in and finally gave up). (One can become an RN without a BS)just like one can become a lawyer without a bachelor's degree at a private or some community colleges.

So if you can get into a nursing program at a community college(no B.S.) or at a four year B.S. program for an RN, go for it! Because you likely will get only one chance at this in these present circumstances in the United States.

Also, even though you might get an RN here in the United States, you could be a traveling nurse (one month to a year) in different countries. However, if you become a doctor or nurse in another country you likely won't be able to practice medicine in the United States because of the way our system works and would have to go to school again here. So if you ever want to work in the United States in the medical profession you likely have to go to school here.

I know of a physician's assistant from Germany who works here as a physical trainer because her degree as a physician's assistant is not good here. However, it is possible that a nurse from the United States might not be able to work in Germany either.

So, I know that American nurses can work in places like Australia and possibly Canada and throughout the 50 United States.

So, if you want to have a trade for life wherever you want to work in the United States or some other countries choose the medical profession if you always want to have a job. I think we are about 116,000 short of nurses right now in the U.S.

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