Changing Career To Nursing
If you are pondering a career switch to Nursing in your late 30’s or 40’s, you must look at it with a positive outlook. It is certainly not too late to become a Nurse, and in fact there are even some benefits to being more advanced and experienced in life when going for this career change.
Nursing schools may determine you are a “mature” student, but there are advantages. As an older student, you will undoubtedly have more life and work experience, and will have a better idea of what you want. Older Nursing students often do not have the same hesitance that a younger student might have.
A benefit to being a mature student is that you can have clear idea of what you want. You have explored another careers and have life experience to back up your career switch decision.
As far as the Nursing profession itself, it is physical and often rigorous work, but a healthy Nurse doesn’t need to be a certain age. Some of the things they might have to be able to do would be to stand for long periods of time, work on-call, move or lift patients, or working with chronically ill patients. Any reasonably healthy person can more than handle the day to day tasks of Nursing. You will also pick up on new methods of healthcare and ways to care for yourself simply by working with people every day who know how to improve physical health. It is a motivating career field that will inspire you to improve.
Something that an older Nursing student might have that younger ones do not is proper insight for clinical situations that are more specific to their age group and older. As baby boomers continue to age, the amount of Nurses needed to care for them will rise, and mature Nurses may be better equipped to do so.
Older Nurses may also have an easier time covering the costs of Nursing school as opposed to the younger ones. It is also comforting later in a career to know that the unemployment rate for Nursing is incredibly low, and benefits are great, even for part-time Nurses.
If interested in a career change, simply do some research on the tests, classes, and other factors involved in Nursing school, and go for it if you like what you find. You have nothing to lose, because it is never too late for a career in Nursing!
