cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/4789208
I always enjoyed explaining to patients what we do, why, what they should do for aftercare and what happens afterwards. What I don’t like is the grind that’s nursing and how immature, lazy and uneducated, proud antivaxers, many nurses I work with are.
The subjects don’t seem that difficult, it would be simply studying more comprehensibly anatomy, biology, chemistry, medicines, OR, legal…
I find it realistic to pass this bachelor but I’m on the older side already. My fears are:
a reduced job pool: everyone needs nurses, but the need for PAs is not as big. I’d have less choice.
age discrimination: true that most of us will have to work till 70 or 72 but I’m still afraid of being rejected for being old.
OTOH: better work life balance and clearly more money in a field that’s not completely unknown to me and I don’t hate.
Would recommend the NP route, especially starting as an RN.
And assuming OP has worked in their target specialty for 10+ years not the worst idea. The problem with current NP schools is that they’re banking on the person coming in with more experience than your average PA candidate, so the didactics are less rigorous.
The problem is that they don’t actually require that experience for enrollment or even to award the degree. So you have straight through ADN-to-NP degree mills that can get a newly graduated RN to prescribing medications in like three years of writing essays about philosophy while working 48 hours a week (now with CHATGPT!) which is just unbelievably dangerous.