Checking In With Nurse Brennan: “What is your favorite part about being a nurse?”

It should be no surprise that there are a wide range of benefits to choosing a career as a Registered Nurse. Some of the most common benefits for why people enter the nursing profession and choose to stay in it include:

• Employment opportunities across the world

• Helping others in their journey towards health promotion, injury or disease prevention, healing, or a transition to a dignified death

• High demand (job security)

• Wide range of workplace settings (e.g. hospitals, clinics, remand facilities, schools, communities, tele-health, etc.)

• Opportunities for further education (e.g. to become a Nurse Practitioner or a faculty member at a post-secondary institution)

• Benefits (e.g. medical and dental insurance, paid time off, education assistance, etc.)

• Immigration sponsorship (e.g. Green Card Visa sponsorship with family to the USA)

• The adrenaline and excitement of working in fast-paced, unpredictable environments (e.g. ER, ICU)

• Work-life balance (working three 12-hour shifts a week and having four days off)

• To learn and develop skills in the health care field

• To care for other during their most exciting times (e.g. labor and delivery) or vulnerable moments (e.g. supporting a patient or family through a difficult diagnosis or trauma)

• To work with and support a variety of populations from neonates to pediatrics and adults to geriatrics

• Strong compensation and pay

My personal motivations for choosing to become a Registered Nurse was that I wanted to work with children and families while having a stable and secure career that would allow me to live a fulfilling life. To this day, this is my favorite part of being in this profession. When I talk about the nursing profession and the many benefits of becoming a Registered Nurse to those who are considering a career in this field, I often discuss the importance of considering what a career will do for you both in the workplace setting and outside of it. You can love what you do, but if a particular profession doesn’t allow you to support yourself and your family, enjoy time off, and live a fulfilling life, is it really something you could see yourself doing? Fortunately, nursing is profession that allows us to do all of these things.

Some of my favorite parts about being a Registered Nurse include both what it does for me in the workplace setting and outside of it. Each and every day is different in the hospital environment. From the moment you start your shift and establish a baseline assessment for your patients, your goal for the next eight to 12 hours is to leave your shift better than when you arrived. This will look different in each setting that you work in, but if you are able to establish meaningful relationships with those you work with and care for, build trust between the patient, family, and medical system, and work towards the collaboratively established goals of either health promotion, injury or disease prevention, healing, or a transition to a dignified death, I would consider this a shift well spent.

In a 168 hour week, you will spend an average of 36 of those hours at the hospital, leaving you with 132 hours outside of work. When you approach work-life balance using this lens, it becomes more clear to see that we have plenty of time to enjoy life outside of the hospital, which I view as being just as important as how we spend our hours inside the hospital setting. For me, I love nothing more than getting a coffee and taking my dog for a walk along the pier in San Francisco for a few hours on a day off, listening to music or a podcast, and connecting with nurses from across the world like you! Investing in my physical and mental health, allows me to be the best that I can be in both my personal and professional life, which is important. For each nurse, this will look different depending on where you live, if you have family or friends nearby, and what you enjoy doing. But most importantly, being in this profession simply allows us to life a fulfilling life outside of the hospital, which is what makes being a Registered Nurse special to me. For the three days a week that I do work, I feel refreshed, recharged, and excited to spend time with my patients and their families, knowing that for those 36 short hours I am invested in them, because for the other 132, I can be invested in me.

What is your favorite part about being a nurse? I would love to learn more about your journey in the nursing profession too!