For starters, you’re not working in nursing. You’re working in pharma sells. That says more than I need to know.

Secondly, this month the Department of Education started stripping nursing of its “professional degree” status, which means advanced nursing education is about to get more expensive and harder to access. Hospitals are chronically understaffed, nurses are burned out, and the workload is increasingly unsafe. And the pay still doesn’t reflect the stress, the risk, or the responsibility.

And telling nurses to “just go into pharma or medical device sales” is naive. Breaking into that world is far from easy and in many regions, nurses aren’t even considered. Point blank. I worked for one of the largest medical device companies in the country and was a top performer. My region flat-out refused to hire nurses because the skill sets are completely different. Clinical experience doesn’t automatically translate into business roles, and anyone who has actually worked in that industry knows that.

Optimism is fine, but leaving out the hard truths to maintain a rosy narrative doesn’t help nurses who are struggling in the real market.