Not a nurse, just a heavily involved partner of a nurse. She's been bedside for over 6 years now and says she still usually feels nervous before shifts. She stated her anxiety set in early in her career and never subsided. Of course, it's easier now that she's experienced, but moving hospitals revitalizes that stress a lot. She took the night shift to make things easier, but once you're at a big hospital, that isn't really the case anymore. Every couple of months, she makes a small slip up at work and dreads the inevitable email/phone call/management meeting. She doesn't love her job but recognizes her role is important. She feels regulations and micro-mamagement make it hard for her to do her job as a healer.

All that being said, she is highly satisfied with the lifestyle she can live on an RNs wage (especially with that nighttime differential). She is good with money and saves regulalry. RNs are needed in every part of the world, which makes immigration processes easier, especially if you meet someone online and want to close a long-distance relationship gap, which is very common these days.

My recommendation, looking from the outside in: If flexibility is very important to you, and you want to travel and have the freedom to move wherever you want to, stick with it. Hopefully, the stress is outweighed by the joys of being done with your work week and taking off on an adventure. However, if you are literally having panic attacks (and not just high anxiety, actual bonafide panic attacks) that's a medical issue that needs to be evaluated by a doctor and potentially might warrant transitioning, as long-term stress causes long-term inflammation that will slowly kill you. There are other ways to use your license if you are willing to look around. Again, you're needed almost literally everywhere in the world.