Is Nursing a Good Career Option for Me?
You’ve probably heard people talk about the shortage of registered nurses and how nursing is a fast-growing career field. Perhaps you’ve always had a passion for helping people and are considering whether to pursue nursing as a profession. Maybe someone you know has suggested that you’d make an excellent nurse and should look into RN degree programs.
Gustavus Adolphus is dedicated to helping our students find and pursue their passions, whether they have a program major declared from the outset or need to use their first and second years to explore options. If you’re interested in a nursing degree program, we’d love to have you visit our campus, meet our nursing faculty, and check out our clinical training facilities. If you’re unsure whether nursing is your calling, that’s okay! We can help you think through what it looks like to work as a registered nurse and whether nursing is a profession that fits your personality and priorities.
Ready for an overview of nursing as a career option? Keep reading to address two important questions: Is nursing a good career overall, and is nursing a good career for me personally?
What are the top benefits of a career in nursing?
Every job has its particular benefits and challenges. A lot of the advantages and disadvantages connected with nursing will vary based on individual personality and preferences, and we’ll explore those more in the next section. First, let’s take a look at some of the general benefits of a career in nursing – the ones most people would agree make a given profession pretty attractive:
The nursing profession offers excellent job stability.
There are segments of the economy that hold steady even when the job market overall is in rough shape, and the field of health care is one of those. Registered nurses in particular are in steep demand, and this trend shows no signs of changing any time soon. The projected job growth rate for RN positions in 2022 was twice the average for jobs generally, due in large part to the older population of registered nurses retiring faster than they are being replaced. Over 190,000 registered nurse jobs are projected to be added in the U.S. each year of this decade.
Nurses with a four-year college education are particularly sought after, with the overwhelming majority of employers reporting that they either require or strongly prefer RN candidates to have a bachelor of nursing degree. Not only are nurses with a four-year degree in high demand for the foreseeable future, there is a significant ongoing shortage of nurses in advanced practice. So your nursing career prospects are solid whether you want to work as an RN or earn a master's degree (MSN) and pursue an advanced practitioner role.
Salaries for nurses are considerably higher than average.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median pay for registered nurses in the United States in 2022 was about $81,000. Compare this with the average job salary of about $74,500/year for U.S. workers with any kind of undergraduate degree.
Not only is the median pay in the nursing field exceptionally high, nursing salaries start out much higher than average. Entry-level RN jobs in the Minneapolis area – just an hour from Gustavus – pay a median salary of $74,000.
With the exceptionally high demand and salary range for registered nurses, most nurses don’t pursue a degree beyond a bachelor of nursing. But for those considering a higher level of nursing education, a master's degree can be a great return on investment. In 2023, salaries for nurse practitioners in Minneapolis is in the $113,000-$153,000 range.
Nursing is a good career for flexible work-life balance.
Different work schedules fit different lifestyles better, and what’s best for you as an individual can also evolve over time. The nursing job that works for you right out of college might not suit your schedule later on if you have toddlers or school-aged children, or if your partner’s work schedule changes. And while many career paths dictate that you will always work 9-5, or always work nights and weekends, in the nursing profession you have options.
A registered nurse in an ER might work 12-hour shifts three days a week, including overnights and holidays, with the benefit of long weekends. The schedule of a school nurse, on the other hand, will mirror the school year: daytime hours Monday-Friday plus long holiday breaks. Meanwhile, a psychiatric nurse practitioner might see all their patients online, setting their own hours to do that on the days that work for them.
As a recent nursing school graduate you can gain valuable experience in your entry-level RN job, then begin to develop a plan for next nursing career steps that complement your future personal life plans. With an array of nursing specialty options and diverse employers, you have the flexibility to pursue a nursing focus that fits both your professional interests and your chosen lifestyle.
Nurses have an excellent range of job advancement opportunities.
One great thing about getting a bachelor of nursing degree is that you don’t need to have detailed career plans beyond being a nurse. Your degree and state nursing license qualify you for an array of entry-level RN jobs, and from there you can try out different nursing positions to see what best suits you.
Perhaps you will discover a particular patient set you especially enjoy working with: infants, children, the elderly, or a population facing a specific type of physical or mental health challenges. Without pursuing an advanced degree, you can seek board certifications in neonatal nursing, pediatrics, gerontology, occupational health, forensic nursing, and an array of other highly focused nursing fields that allow you to specialize according to your individual passions and skill sets.
If you love direct patient care but you’re ready for more job autonomy, including starting your own nursing practice, you can join the 20% of registered nurses who pursue advanced degrees. A master of science in nursing (MSN) allows you to work as an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN), including becoming a nurse practitioner. NPs operate as primary care providers, performing most of the same functions as a medical doctor, and many become dedicated experts in exciting specialty fields such as oncology, psychiatry, or neurology.
Finally, working as an RN can be a career launchpad into nursing roles besides direct patient care. If you find you have a knack for training, research, education, management, or information technology, you might get a master’s degree or doctorate that funnels your nursing expertise into an advanced nursing leadership role.
The great thing about an RN job is that you continue to gain valuable clinical expertise at work each day, and if and when you’re ready to advance or just switch nursing careers, your options are wide open. Some nurses pursue additional certification and degrees straight out of their bachelor’s program, while others wait and explore their options for years before pursuing an MSN or pivoting into a new specialty practice.
Is nursing a good career for me personally?
So the nursing profession pays well, and qualified nurses are in high demand for the foreseeable future. Nursing is clearly a great career for the right person, but if nursing were for everyone, would the demand for registered nurses be so high? How do you know if you’ve got what it takes to both be a great nurse for your patients and find professional fulfillment in a nursing career? To get a clearer picture, here’s a list of the top characteristics that are crucial to being successful nurse:
You have great compassion and love to help people.
Perhaps the first and most important quality of an excellent nurse is that you’re the type of person who experiences taking good care of other people as its own reward. Yes, you will get paid well as RN, and there are all the other career perks we mentioned above. But nursing also means getting your hands dirty, and being an RN doesn’t typically bring a lot of public glory or accolades.
The daily reward for being a successful nurse is knowing you’ve provided real comfort and care, concretely improved patient health outcomes, and generally made someone’s day that much better. If you gain energy and a sense of accomplishment from helping other people in direct, practical ways and making the world a better place one personal interaction at a time, then nursing might be a rewarding career option for you.
You’re a perceptive listener and clear communicator.
As a nursing professional you’ll often be the first and primary point of contact for vulnerable patients and their families. Nurses need to be excellent communicators, reassuring each patient through their words, body language, and general demeanor that the patient is truly safe and in expert hands.
There are several ways in which clear and perceptive communication skills are critical to success in the nursing profession. First, nurses help patients and their families understand the relevant medical science and clinical processes at hand, translating complex terminology into everyday language and answering follow-up questions. Equally important, an RN needs the ability to listen carefully to a patient’s concerns and even read between the lines, perceiving anxiety or gaps in understanding that may be difficult for the patient or their family to put into words, then bridging these gaps to provide accurate information and calm reassurance.
Finally, nurses serve as liaisons between the patient population and other healthcare professionals, advocating for their patients with, for instance, doctors, insurance companies, or the hospital billing department. As a nurse, you’ll need to listen hard, interpret accurately, ask good questions, and carefully communicate your patients’ needs to others to ensure best possible outcomes.
You have good focus and organizational skills.
Also key to nursing success is the ability to juggle a lot of different tasks, remain organized, and tie up all the loose ends each shift as you hand things off to the nurse who’s taking over from you. Nurses need to manage multiple detailed patient charts, independently prioritize the order in which they execute their tasks, and document their work in a thorough and timely manner.
As with communication, some of us have better natural organizational skills than others. If these are already key strengths of yours, all the better. But in both cases, if nursing is a career choice that appeals to you, these are qualities you can commit to develop, whatever your starting point. As a Gustavus nursing student, you’ll spend much of your first two years in school in a cross-disciplinary liberal arts program, taking classes inside a curriculum especially designed to exercise and strengthen your communication skills. And if organization doesn’t come naturally to you? From the beginning of your nursing school education you’ll have access to a whole network of dedicated mentors – peers, faculty, staff, and alumni – ready to strategize with you to develop systems for personal organization and time management that work with the way your brain is wired.
The upshot so far? If you have a passion for helping people, and a strong commitment to hone your communication and organization skills, the Gustavus nursing program can help you on your path to a fulfilling nursing career. Here are just a few more important nurse characteristics to consider before you jump into a nursing degree:
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You have the stamina for long hours and physical work.
While some advanced practice nursing positions are cushier, you can expect pretty much any entry-level RN role to be pretty physically demanding. Advancements in technology, such as lifts for moving patients, have made certain nursing tasks easier and safer, but nurses still do a good deal of lifting, reaching, and bending as part of their daily work.
For example, as a hospital nurse you’ll be on your feet most if not all of your shift, standing or walking for 8-12 hours at a stretch with minimal breaks. In order to provide other people with excellent health care, you’ll need to be in good health yourself and prepared to handle being on your feet all day. Of course, not all aspects of your physical health can be controlled for in the long term, but as you enter a nursing program, you’ll want to be sure you can commit proactively to a healthy, active lifestyle to maintain high energy levels and avoid workplace strain and injuries as much as possible.
You’re emotionally resilient and have a good support system.
Nursing is essentially customer service work, and nurses serve a “customer” population with all sorts of personalities and in all states of physical and mental health. No matter how kind and competent you are as a nurse, some patients will be difficult, and on occasion just blatantly mean. You’ll need to be able to shrug this off and continue on your way to the next patient without being thrown off your game.
But perhaps more important than having thick skin to weather that minority of unpleasant interactions, nurses need to be able to handle the more general emotional work of caring for vulnerable people. The strain will vary a lot depending on the exact nursing context, but you’ll want to discern carefully whether you’re the type of person who can intimately encounter other people’s health issues without taking this on too much emotionally. Even if this aspect of nursing seems like something you’ll be fine with, you’ll want to be prepared to safeguard your own mental and emotional health with a good network of social, peer, and counseling support going into your nursing career.
You have a strong stomach.
A lot of other stable, high-paying jobs involve office chairs, computer screens, and an arms-length distance from the gritty physical realities of human existence. Obviously, nursing is not that kind of job, but it bears considering just what kind of situations you’ll face as a nurse. To survive as an RN, you need to be able to encounter any and all of the physical health issues human beings suffer and not be squeamish or overwhelmed.
Are you the sort of person who’s unfazed by bodily fluids, strong smells, open wounds, and physical abnormalities? Can you face these things not just as an observer, but as someone who will clean up messes, dress wounds, stitch cuts, and assure vulnerable patients that you’re happy to do that? If so, you have one of the crucial qualities necessary to be a good nurse.
You see unpredictability as an exciting challenge.
Every day at work as a nurse will bring new patients and different specific challenges. Human health is incredibly complex, and no nursing school can cover all the possible scenarios you’ll run into in the real world of health care.
This is why at Gustavus we provide our first- and second-year nursing students with a strong liberal arts education as the foundation of their nursing degree. We know that critical thinking and problem-solving abilities are as crucial to successful nursing as the science and technical nursing skills you’ll learn in your junior and senior years at Gustavus. If this holistic approach to nursing education makes sense to you, and a career full of challenging puzzles and complex decision-making sounds exciting, then nursing might be the profession for you – and the Gustavus nursing program might be a good match for you as well!
Why consider a nursing education at Gustavus?
Does registered nursing seem like it might be a good career fit? Are you interested in a degree program that prepares you for a successful nursing career on all the fronts discussed above? Our BSN students receive a strong science education and hands-on clinical training, while also receiving the rarer benefit of a thorough core education in the humanities and social sciences.
Through a carefully crafted curriculum that strategically combines the arts and sciences, Gustavus nursing students gain strong technical nursing skills while also exercising and strengthening their critical thinking, processing, and communication faculties. We supplement this with a rich array of experiential learning options in the form of internships, study-away programs, and collaborative research opportunities.
Importantly, we limit enrollment to keep our faculty-student ratio high (11:1) and ensure our students receive all the personalized support and guidance they need to prepare them for career success. Each year’s nursing cohort is only 40 students, so our dedicated nursing faculty have the time and space to share their expertise and advise students one-on-one throughout their four years in the nursing program. With expert instruction, close continuous mentorship, experiential learning, and a challenging cross-disciplinary education, we equip our students to be well-rounded nurses who make the world a better place, one patient at a time.
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