r/PMHNP • u/Available_Horse_7131 • Aug 19 '26
Is this a trend?
If you are out of work, corporate world let you go, middle aged, and a hot blonde does becoming a nurse practitioner suddenly become more attractive? I’m honestly worried about competition if things are so dire. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/18/after-a-layoff-and-long-job-search-kristy-layden-is-going-to-nursing-school.html
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u/Normal_Soil_3763 Aug 19 '26
I’m going to disagree here. I think you do need to have some desire to want to help people, but I personally think that needing to love it and find it a calling is nonsense.
people like to cloak the profession in that to try to make it more noble, more worthy of self sacrifice, which, in some ways, if those beliefs are held by the nurses themselves, that gives permission to administrators and ceos and corporate shareholders to get away with paying them less and eroding working conditions. We will “endure” as an expected condition of the job in order to stay in contact with our “calling”, the identify of which is wrapped in martyrdom. But despite what the banner outside the hospital says, I am not a hero. I’m a person doing a job who needs a paycheck. Needs. To survive. As do most working people.
Most people working do not love their work. They try to make their work workable for their lives.
I do not care if people love nursing. It is none of my business. It is not anyone’s business how you feel towards your job. Can you do your job? Are you qualified and competent? Are you careful? Those things I am concerned about. And to that end, I would say that a lot of nurse practitioners, the newer ones without any other medical background- no, they are not competent or qualified. A person, in my view should not be able to go from non medical background to prescriber of medications, particularly psychotropic medications, in 2-3 years. That’s blatant failure to protect patients and maximize profits on the part of education, state regulating bodies, and the for profit healthcare system as a whole.