Why Nursing? 10 Reasons to Become a Nurse
You want a career path that offers job stability, a livable salary, and a sense of purpose when you go to work each day. Perhaps you enjoy studying science, love working with people, and want a job that challenges your brain and keeps you learning new things. If all of the above apply, then nursing might be a good career option for you.
If you take this path, Gustavus Adolphus College is a great choice for anyone seeking a nursing program in Minnesota. Every year we admit a cohort of 40 students to our nursing major, where future nurses receive rigorous training in the science and art of the nursing profession. Our 100% faculty-taught classes prepare students to lead lives of service and leadership, administering expert care to the vulnerable and advancing the field of health care, one patient at a time. At Gustavus, we set our nursing students up for success through personalized academic and career guidance, supportive mentoring relationships, and clinical internships with our network of healthcare partners. Full-time nursing students at Gustavus also receive financial aid through generous need-based and merit-based scholarships that renew yearly. See our article on how to pay for nursing school to learn more about using institutional scholarships and other financial aid support to fund your education.
We’re always interested in finding students who are passionate about joining the next generation of nursing professionals. If you think you might be interested in a career in nursing, keep reading for a breakdown of ten reasons students choose nursing for a profession, from high pay to work-life balance to personal and professional career fulfillment.
10 good reasons to become a nurse
As you consider a career in nursing, here are some of the top reasons why nursing professionals find their jobs fulfilling, as well as being a good fit with their lives outside of work:
1. Nurses are in high demand throughout the country.
The need for highly skilled health professionals has been on the rise for years, and registered nurses will continue to be a high-demand category for the foreseeable future. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that employment in the nursing field will grow 6% between 2022 and 2032, with 193,100 projected nursing job openings per year during that decade. Nursing job growth outpacing the average is due in large part to aging on two fronts. First, many current registered nurses are retiring and will continue to retire during these years. Second, the healthcare field is continually trying to catch up to the care demands of the general population as people in the U.S. live longer and require more medical attention.
The shortage of qualified nurses is difficult news for society generally, but for college students pursuing a nursing major, it means smooth entry into the career field right out of nursing school as well as ongoing job security. Nurses with a bachelor of science in nursing are in particularly high demand, with the vast majority of employers preferring or even requiring candidates to hold a four-year degree. And given the projected ongoing demand into the next decade, job stability for registered nurses is expected to remain excellent.
2. Being a nurse pays well right out of college.
Because of the high demand for skilled nurses, new nursing graduates can expect to make a starting salary that’s on par with the average salary of other college graduates throughout their careers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average annual income of a U.S. worker with a bachelor’s degree was $74,464. By comparison, newly graduated registered nurses in Minneapolis (an hour from the Gustavus campus) report average starting salaries of $74,175. According to the most recent BLS statistics, the median salary for registered nurses overall is over $81,000.
These numbers vary somewhat depending on the cost of living and demand for nurses in a particular area, but on average nursing jobs offer exceptionally good wages even for entry-level positions. This is also just base pay: nursing careers tend to carry solid benefits packages, including often for part-time nurses. Nursing graduates who are willing to cast a wide net geographically can also seek out jobs from employers offering sign-on bonuses to fill high-demand positions.
Investing money in a nursing degree pays off, and nursing scholarships and loan forgiveness programs can help you reduce your initial college debt or pay it down even faster after graduation. Learn more about the range of financial aid options in our article about nursing scholarships.
3. The nursing field has great advancement opportunities.
Nurses with a bachelor’s degree have a wide range of options for advancement and specialization either with or without further academic attainment. As a new nurse, you may know your nursing passion, or you might spend a few years on the job finding the right fit for you. As you discover the specialty field or patient population you love most, you can pursue certification in that area through the relevant nursing specialty association.
Nurses interested in pediatrics, gerontology, oncology, or dozens of other nursing concentrations gain expertise in that area on the job, logging the required number of hours in their nursing concentration. Once you’ve gained the requisite work hours in your specialty field, you’ll demonstrate your proficiency by taking and passing the relevant board certification exam, gaining credentials that are universally recognized and valued by employers in the healthcare field.
Additionally, about 20% of nurses pursue an advanced degree at some point in their careers, either a master of science in nursing (MSN), another master’s degree, a doctor of nursing (DNP), or a nursing PhD. Nurses who earn an MSN become advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) and often go on to start their own independent practices. Nurse practitioners earn a median salary of over $123,000 and can do similar work to medical doctors, including operating as primary care providers for their patients.
4. Working as a nurse is a lifelong learning experience.
One thing nurses generally agree on is that the job is never boring. Working in direct patient care as an RN means meeting new people daily and encountering unique sets of challenges that engage your creative problem-solving skills and keep you on your toes. The human body is incredibly complex, and no matter how much you know, there is always more to learn.
As patients, we don’t always see the creative side of nursing, but the reality is that registered nurses do so much more than check vitals, hook up IVs, and administer medication. As a nurse, you’ll be playing the combined roles of technician, caretaker, educator, advocate, strategist, and liaison between your patients and all parts of the healthcare system. As challenging situations arise, you’ll consult with colleagues to troubleshoot and make important decisions to produce the best patient outcomes.
The naturally dynamic nature of nursing means you will continue adding new bits of data to your knowledge base and strengthening your abilities to communicate, network, synthesize information, and strategize solutions. If you want a job that’s pretty much the same each day, nursing isn’t the field for you. If you enjoy solving complex puzzles and continually building on your knowledge and skills, you have one of the most important characteristics of a nurse.
5. You get to help people in tangible, immediate ways.
Many nurses say they knew very early on in life that they wanted to go into a profession where they were able to help other people. Of course, many different careers contribute to improving quality of life, providing essential goods and services, and keeping our institutions up and running. But some people are especially inclined to want to serve people very directly, face to face, and enjoy a particular sense of fulfillment when they’re able to do that.
Nurses, not doctors, are generally the healthcare professionals we see first when we go in for care, and they’re often the people who spend the most time with us as patients. Nurses make us feel welcome, ensure we’re as comfortable as we can be, and provide us with a safe space to ask our embarrassing or complicated questions. They check all the boxes to ensure nothing slips through the cracks, break down complex information into laypeople’s terms, and explain our options to us.
As a nurse, you’ll have the opportunity to welcome patients, create a positive environment for them, and reassure them that they’re in good hands. Combine that with providing expert clinical care, and you will have the ongoing satisfaction of knowing you’re making a real difference in people’s lives each and every day you go to work.
6. Nurses work anywhere and everywhere.
When we hear the word “nurse,” the first thing many of us picture is a hospital exam room, urgent care clinic, or maybe an emergency room. TV hospital dramas have trained us to picture nurses in the midst of dramatic ER triage events. In real life, most of us have been cared for by a nurse at a hospital or clinic, or interacted with nurses there when visiting a family member or friend.
Many nurses do, in fact, work exclusively in hospitals or clinics. But the larger population of registered nurses operate in a vast variety of additional workplaces: grade schools, high schools, college classrooms, rehabilitation centers, assisted living facilities, nursing homes, military bases, forensics labs, research labs, correctional facilities, public health offices, advocacy centers, courtrooms, and more. Flight nurses even work in the air, most often on helicopters transporting patients in emergency medical situations.
The vast world of nursing professions means you can potentially work in one or more substantially different settings over the course of your career. And because nurses are needed everywhere in the country, your geographical preferences tend to be easier to satisfy with a nursing career than in many fields that require you to “go where the jobs are.” If you’re curious about your professional options as a nurse, read our article introducing you to the wide world of nursing careers.
7. A nursing career can evolve to fit your lifestyle and interests.
You’ll start your nursing rotations in direct patient care to learn the ropes, and from there, you have the opportunity to pursue specialty certifications or an advanced degree. Many nurses work in a wide variety of fields throughout their careers, gaining valuable interdisciplinary experience at each step that enriches their overall skills as nurses.
Your nursing career can adapt to your evolving interests, and also to fit the changing demands of your personal life. As a recent college graduate, you might appreciate 12-hour hospital shifts clustered together, with a long accompanying “weekend.” Nurses who become parents might want to move to a daytime-only schedule with weekends and holidays off, such as a nursing job in an academic or primary care clinic setting.
There are nursing careers to fit every schedule, and you don’t have to stick with one. Myriad opportunities for career redirection offer you flexible long-term planning options whether you’re coordinating schedules with a partner, looking to spend more time with your kids, going back to school, or just achieving the best work-life balance for you personally. If you’re interested in a flexible professional career that evolves alongside your life, applying to a bachelor of nursing program might be the right move for you. Check out our article on how to apply to nursing school to help you get started.
8. Time away and part-time work won’t harm your nursing career.
Many professionals with high-paying careers feel pressure to stay continuously employed and keep advancing to prove their dedication and ambition to colleagues, employers, and clients. They worry that having to explain gaps in employment or reduced work hours will reflect badly on them and perhaps deter future employers from hiring them. High-powered jobs in certain dynamic fields can also carry a fear of getting behind or losing touch with the evolving needs of the industry.
Despite being a high-paying and highly-skilled profession, nursing is generally much more flexible in terms of career trajectory. Nurses aren’t frowned on for working part time, and part-time nurses are often paid similarly to their full-time counterparts. Some part-time nursing jobs even offer similar benefits packages to full-time work.
While you’ll want to establish yourself in full-time nursing at the outset of your career and develop professionally in your chosen specialty or specialties, taking a break from nursing later on is not a career killer. You’ll need to stay up to date with any certifications and continuing education in your specialties during that time, and of course, returning to work will always involve a readjustment period. But overall, you have flexible options.
9. Nurses educate patients to lead healthier lives.
For many nurses, one of the most fulfilling aspects of their career is the daily opportunity to teach their patients how to safeguard their health, prevent disease, and manage ongoing conditions better. Between their intensive college education and continuous on-the-job learning, experienced nurses hold a wealth of valuable practical knowledge the general population does not.
Some nurses specialize in nursing education roles, such as giving talks to schoolchildren, becoming college professors, or working in public health education. In reality, though, all nurses are educators by virtue of their specialty knowledge set and role in society. Let’s face it: even if you move to a nursing job in informatics or lab research where you’re not doing direct patient care, your friends and family will be coming to you with the odd medical question, looking for your professional advice!
Meanwhile, in any role involving direct patient care, nurses are the go-to providers of pertinent health information for their patients. By offering nonjudgmental but evidence-based guidance, you have the opportunity to improve patient outcomes and make society that much healthier, one patient at a time. To envision how your nursing education prepares you to educate others, check out our article on the benefits of a top-tier private nursing education.
10. You can develop meaningful long-term relationships in your work.
One thing many nurses love about their jobs is the opportunity to form relationships with patients. Just like we all prefer to patronize businesses where we know and like the employees, patients return for check-ups and routine care to clinical settings where they trust the nurses and have a safe place to bring sensitive health questions and concerns.
Patients also appreciate knowing their nurse is already familiar with their health history, not only from reading charts but from being there in person in the past, addressing medical concerns in real time. Long-term continuity of care tends to improve patients’ overall sense of well-being and promotes better health outcomes. And in turn it can be incredibly rewarding for nurses who get to observe the ongoing benefits of the care they provide as well as seeing familiar faces in the exam room.
Of course, not all nursing positions involve building long-term patient relationships. If you are an ER nurse, travel nurse, or operating room nurse, you may only see the same patients over a short period of time. On the other hand, a pediatric nurse or nurse practitioner who stays in one clinic for decades will likely treat the children of some of the patients they treated when those patients were children. So if developing lasting relationships with those you serve appeals to you, you can pursue a nursing role in a setting where patients return for care over the years.
Why choose nursing school at Gustavus Adolphus College?
There are a lot of good reasons to become an RN, and a lot of good reasons to pursue a four-year nursing degree: preferential consideration by employers, expanded advancement opportunities, higher average pay, and better all-around development of the various skills demanded by the job.
Nursing is both an art and a science. At Gustavus Adolphus, we design our nursing program curriculum to account for the wide range of skills nursing students need to be well-prepared to enter the nursing field. This includes biology, chemistry, psychology, and other scientific and clinical training required to become an excellent technical nurse. We integrate this with a vibrant and challenging liberal arts education that delves deep into the humanities. By seamlessly weaving together the arts and sciences, a Gustavus education fosters the deep critical thinking and incisive problem-solving skills so essential to the real-life complexities of a career in nursing.
We safeguard the integrity of this education by keeping our class sizes small to allow for close cohort collaboration and expert faculty guidance. We also facilitate our students’ holistic health and academic success through a multi-layered support system offering a variety of mentorships, personalized writing development help, academic planning guidance, and robust physical, mental, and spiritual health services. The vast majority of our students also participate in experiential learning opportunities including internships, collaborative research, study-away programs, and community engagement programs.
The goal of our nursing program is to foster the education and growth of the whole person so that our nursing graduates leave school as well-rounded individuals and lifelong learners. If you're looking for a holistic approach to a nursing education that prepares you for a holistic approach to your nursing career, check us out!
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