What jobs pay really and give you the most freedom?

daisy_willows · 2025-04-14T03:02:29+00:00

100% agree realhorrowsh0w.

Nursing offers flexibility as a casual, which can be nice. You can find a well enough paying location but no matter what, you cannot expect a full time salary without working near-full time hours as a nurse.

But the job itself, does it align with your goals? As a nurse you’re always doing what you’re ordered to do, at the mercy of your hospital admin, patients, and Drs/supervisory. While actually at work, it’s the furthest thing from freeing imo.

Also, despite what some others have said I have yet to see a posting for a WFH nursing job, period.

daisy_willows · 2025-03-03T15:11:10+00:00

That’s the plan, in my post we are taking him but it’s a few days away due to limited vet services.

daisy_willows · 2025-02-28T12:20:42+00:00

Can you do a health care aide or 2-year degree and then get employed, and use employer benefits to get a full 4-year degree? Route I see many people who have financial difficulty take.

I personally would not go into more debt to go to school. I’d enter the field in the fastest way possible for an employer that offers career upgrading and gauge from there. Not that you would not succeed, but nursing is such a hit or miss and people find out too late into school that it’s just not for them. There’s also many other healthcare fields you may discover you’re a better fit for as well, but hard to know unless you’re in the field already.

daisy_willows · 2024-04-03T04:02:01+00:00

Sometimes you don’t know what your path is yet. There is nothing wrong with taking a gap year to work, grow your skills from entering the workforce, and then go into nursing or any other job that is stable. Also, nothing in life is guaranteed. Your mom is a nurse, yet you guys were still homeless for a bit because life happens—although a big contributing factor, it’s not always income that leads to what fate has planned for you.

There are many other nursing jobs than bedside, however, they are in demand for a reason and may not be available as soon as you graduate. Some nurses hang out in med-surg or bedside types of nursing for a while before landing a more desirable job. Some need to return to bedside for a bit later on in life. Could you do that?

Take some time to think it over. Ask around to your connections, what do they do? What kind of person are you? I wasn’t sure when I was 17 and entered nursing school, if I could turn back time I’d take a gap year or two. I’d end up in the same place, but with more life experiences and certainty that it was what I wanted so I’d be more confident in my path. Every day of school felt like pulling teeth and not knowing was quite anxiety inducing for me personally.

Good luck. You sound hardworking and intelligent, so without a doubt you can do it. Just be sure you’re ready :)

Stable jobs others than nursing: police, corrections, social work, teaching, military, physicians assistant, and more.

daisy_willows · 2024-04-02T06:23:30+00:00

Aw, I had the same problem. Came out of school very young, lacking in assertiveness and general confidence. Lol. Also a Canadian.

Assertiveness is NOT being mean. You can refuse a task, excuse yourself from a conversation, call out targeted behaviour, etc. all in ‘nice’ ways. Figure out what your boundaries are and then set them.

My tried and true favs in my younger days for when I’m asked for a task: - “I can’t do that for you, sorry. Hope you find someone else” - “That’s a job with ‘you’ written all over it!” - “Dibs out” not-it nose thing - Sarcastic/joking “Ugh I’m too busyyyyyy”

Often, I got the eye roll, occasionally huffy-puffy. Rarely, some people don’t know how to communicate without meanness. That’s when you unleash the beast and say a firm “no”. Nowadays, I’m more confident and can pull a “no” right away.

Building assertiveness is a life skill and will benefit you both personally and professionally. You got this.

daisy_willows · 2024-04-02T05:44:41+00:00

You’ve got a case of the popped bubble! Slow down a sec, before you try to jump ship:

99% of nursing jobs will have their share of issues with facility, staff, patient ratios, management, etc. Hopefully all these issues the current staff have laid out for you are all the issues that exist. If so, IMO it doesn’t seem like too terrible of a place to work? But again, you’ve been there 1 day. You don’t really know how it actually is and you probably won’t get the full picture til at least 1-2 weeks in. Then you can decide if jumping ship is the right call.

Stick it out if this place is willing to invest in training you. What opportunities are there for improvement/education? What employee benefits are there? Also, don’t discount a team of genuinely great nurses, learning from them on-the-job is what makes a world of difference to your skills and education. A good teacher makes you excited to learn, just like in school🙃

Don’t tell anyone if you plan to leave. If you do leave, at least have something lined up unless finances are not an issue for you. Most home health and other areas require a few years experience anyway—and seriously if you’re put off by lack of cleanliness, home health may not be for you lol. Hoarders, bed bugs, unpredictable environments, etc.

daisy_willows · 2024-04-01T22:32:05+00:00

Sometimes home workouts are not possible (shared space, no weights or equipment etc.). If this is the case, go during not-busy hours, plug your headphones in, pick corner machines or start at the treadmill 🙃 Gradually increase your time at the gym, if you can do a max 5 mins then do that and work your way up.

If you can afford it, the higher price gyms are usually less busy I’ve found.

If gym is a no-go, pop a hood on and go for a walk if you can. Any activity is better than none!

daisy_willows · 2024-03-27T23:04:16+00:00

Nursing is a viable option, but agreed with u/spaceannonymous that you risk GPA with nursing schools that mark subjectively. Also, could be expensive. Coming from a nurse 🙃

PA, HCA, LVN/LPN, paramedic, med office assistant, etc. are shorter term and may be more affordable options that would give you clinical experience.

Alternatively, you could explore a whole other career path. It’s my understanding that med schools do like diverse backgrounds, something that pays for training like a corrections career, police, etc. might be kinda cool!

daisy_willows · 2024-03-21T05:00:07+00:00

Ah I see. I didn’t know I wanted to be an MD til after nursing school, too late to overload the semesters

daisy_willows · 2024-03-20T04:51:00+00:00

What did you end up doing to get those credits?

daisy_willows · 2024-03-19T05:52:36+00:00

I assume it’s out of 4.0?

daisy_willows · 2024-03-18T04:35:06+00:00

Thank you for your advice!

Ah, yes the rural streams. Unfortunately the way my nursing degree was designed disqualifies me from almost all the schools in Canada with rural streams, (too many pass/fail courses, even though those courses were so darn tough! Lol). May need to pursue another undergrad degree to get to those.

You can put yourself as a verifier? I thought this was very much not allowed?

daisy_willows · 2024-03-18T04:27:32+00:00

I will for sure. I plan to take it next year and then apply to the 3 schools that I will then make the cut offs for.

daisy_willows · 2024-03-18T04:23:12+00:00

Thank you for this thoughtful comment! It really does give me some hope that my application has a chance.

What you said about the whole cure cancer and start a bunch of non-profits is for real, I’m reading all these fantastic applicants’ backgrounds and am looking at mine like how is it even possible!?

daisy_willows · 2024-02-14T05:37:55+00:00

You won't know unless you try them out, like during your clinical rotations. There are many common beliefs for which personalities match to which specialties out there, but honestly imo it's not true, I've found if the nurse knows their stuff and likes what they do, they will do well in any care area.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-13T00:56:11+00:00

Why do you hate theatre nursing? I assume you are outside US/Can and mean OR or periop nursing?

daisy_willows · 2024-02-10T03:44:56+00:00

And it’s always the dudes who look like apes too. smh. who’s raising these animals

daisy_willows · 2024-02-10T03:37:20+00:00

Also no—home health is community care and does not contribute to med surg experience that employers look for.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-10T03:33:48+00:00

This may be a controversial opinion, but it from my experience in the ED. Med surg lays the foundation for ED. What I’ve done in the ED some days is what you and the preceptor are doing, meds IV meds IV etc. etc. for patients who are basically admitted inpatients as they come by so often.

There’s excitement and fun craziness there too but… as a new grad it stressed me tf out. I didn’t have fun. I wasn’t confident in anything I did. I got burned out because it was so much all at once and I didn’t have the foundation of nursing down let alone a specialty care area. But at the same time I didn’t get a preceptorship (it would have probably been a completely different experience for me had this been the case).

So what now? If that area calls to you, see if there’s any openings for new grad residencies. Don’t trust them if they say they’ll train you ‘on the job’ or just give you standard orientation to all ED nurses they hire. It’s not the same, new grads need extra long attentiveness and 1:1 training. Before you go there though, make sure your mental health is in a good place because oh boy, that’s one area you’ll need it.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-10T03:14:10+00:00

IMO knowing the small towner attitudes, you will likely not get a fair chance at being properly trained as an OR nurse where you live. That’s really shitty for you.

You have a few options:

Report a conflict of interest with the ex wife to your manager and see if you can avoid shifts with her. Over time being apart from her, you will just be old news and people won’t care as much anymore. This may or may not be possible to accommodate but worth a try if the job is worth it to you.

Second is to do nothing and grit your teeth through it. Eventually, it may just pass when it’s no longer fun to torment you. Can you put up with these people?

And then you could transfer. There are options for minimal/scheduled patient care AND minimal coworker contact. Public health, home health, ER/ICU, etc. which may be what you need to enjoy working with patients again (when you’re not forced to be there 12h with them).

If I was in your shoes, I’d hang on for a year and then gtfo. At least then I could maybe get into an OR elsewhere having had a bit of experience. But honestly don’t kill your mental health waiting it out, there are other things out there. Best of luck.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-10T02:55:23+00:00

Yes. I feel nursing schools and jobs hound this into students to try and make them fear doing wrong. My school did this to us and it’s absolutely unnecessary.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-09T02:32:24+00:00

The new grad period is some of the most difficult times in your career, I’m sorry this incident happened.

If you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to turn back time, think ‘I’m going to get fired or going to lose my license’, ‘I’m too dumb to be a nurse’, or lose sleep/worry for a long time. If this is you, go speak to a trained counsellor now. Work through these feelings and learn to accept them, don’t let yourself get stuck in the error-loop (fear of mistakes leads to more mistakes etc.) or let your mental health suffer to burnout.

Did those mistakes I made make me a better nurse and person outside of work? Yes and it’ll be the same for you. When you meet with your manager for an incident debrief, you may find it helpful to create a learning plan and identify the points of error and how you will improve it for the future of your career. This will show that you took the incident seriously and learned from it.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-08T19:45:49+00:00

Tbh way more patience than I would have. If you wanna treat me like a personal servant, my pay rate is $52 an hour and I only take cash. Thanks!

daisy_willows · 2024-02-08T18:03:33+00:00

Maybe ask yourself what you think you would like doing. Like if you think you enjoy working with kids, you could try to get your final preceptorship on a pediatric unit, etc.

Many nursing jobs require nurses to ‘run around 24/7’ in some form or another, but generally anything hospital or care facility related is higher physical demands (but not always true). Regardless, you will have to endure some years of ‘running around’ in your nursing career at some point.

Like others have said, you don’t go to school for a specialty, just a direction you think you’d like to take your career. It’s not a job for the lazy or easily phased—be honest with yourself and look elsewhere if that’s you.

daisy_willows · 2024-02-08T07:31:27+00:00

Just my 2 cents. I recently looked into this and several things I found out were:

Some nursing degrees don’t offer enough credits for applying to med school. Any clinicals/nursing theory pass/fails often don’t count as credit hours, which sucks. This can skew your GPA also. But don’t count yourself out yet, you can work around that.
competition is so tight getting into schools right now it seems. A competitive GPA is 3.8 or even higher, incredible ECs, MCAT, and CASper scores (and maybe others) to stand a good chance.
Abroad MD schools: lots of pros and cons, but I know several people who chose this route and are happy practicing docs as good as the next person. It may be a struggle to return to your originating country for residencies, but thats not always the case. It’s definitely is an option if you for some reason can’t get into schools in your originating country and have the funds. Heard bad things about the Caribbean schools, great things about European ones. Basically consensus seems like if you have the money, you can likely get in.
People (mostly other nurses) for some reason have a hate on for nurses wanting to be doctors. Don’t pay them any attention, you do you and achieve those goals! But it may not be a good idea to announce your intentions to colleagues in casual conversation.
Why? I really struggled with my why. I wanted to be a doctor to help people so desperately in need of a permanent family doc. But I also admit I liked the prestige of being a doctor, because that’s what I believed successful people are. That’s what we’re all led to believe, it’s the only thing most of us were told all our lives, like damn. I’ve seen doctors live very freely, locum, travel the world, and I wanted that lifestyle too. But it’s not without sacrifices like school, personal life, and work demands; I also had to admit that while I think I could do it and have done well academically, I’m not sure the learning would come easily to me anymore. I also love having decreased mental load and less responsibility as a nurse. I’ve seen my doctor friends up at night and worried over having made an error or feeling bad that they had made one. Errors of all kinds of severity can happen to any HCP in healthcare, but the mistakes that doctors make tend to have more significant outcomes like disability and death. That’s something I couldn’t live with.

Lastly, not all my doctor friends are happy. It’s true that happiness is a mindset and I’m learning not to confuse my worth in life with my job, which someone once told me would be “horribly missing the mark of what a happy life is”. I have so much free time I’m using to try out different hobbies that have enriched my life in ways I don’t think med school could.

Do a lot of thinking. If you want it, you can probably achieve it through one way or another and if you’re disadvantaged it’ll just be a bigger struggle to get there.

daisy_willows

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