Nursing or social work?

A nursing degree with a masters in social work would be a fantastic combination. Since you need a masters for social work anyway, you might consider that route. Social workers many times manager the coordination of elder care if you have any interest in that, and they have to deal with nurses and doctors quite a bit, so it is good if they have experience and/or education in nursing. I think this field wil continue to grow and grow. Plus, there is a real shortage of nurses, and from there you can change your mind about SW and become an NP or PA or a girlfriend of mine is a nurse anesthetist, she makes a fantastic salary. In general nurses make good salaries, and have many have flexible schedules which is nice also. After all of that positive information about nursing I will end with this: nurses tend to be underappreciated, if you work in a hospital you wind up doing a lot of yucky things that many people going into nursing are not realistic about like cleaning bed pans, and caring for infected wounds. Of course, you do not have to work in a hospital, there are other choices. Be sure to talk to some nurses to get a realstic view of things.

I can only speak for my experience in nursing. The field has been a very good fit for me and my family until recently. I have enjoyed great flexibility with my hours that allow me to work around my husband and kids schedules. I work with very friendly and fun colleagues. I work in an operating room that is busy and involved in high level trauma. The work is exactly right for me with constant challenges without having to take anything home. Nursing school is tough…you have to be very dedicated and if you don’t like nursing then it will be torture getting through. I know people get through while married or working but I am not sure how…I was fortunate to only focus on school. In terms of pay, nursing pays ok….but remember that you will most likely have to work all different shifts, weekends, holidays, overtime and it will continue until you retire. We have 60 and 70 year old nurses having to do mandatory 44 hour weeks….Things go in cycles and because of the economy we are in a bad spot. Our hospital has not renewed any of our travelling nurses so we are incredibly short staffed. That means that the rest of the staff is working huge amounts of hours to keep things going…not by choice. It is really tough right now but things will improve…So I would say nursing is a great field but it is not easy and mostly it really needs to be a fit for you. You could maybe do some volunteer work in an area of nursing your interested in and see if it is a fit. Good luck to you…

Thankyou soo much.. this has really helped!!! i will definately talk to some nurses, and see how they feel about the job.. One more thing, does it matter that i have no expereinmce in this field or that after my degree, and when i get married, i can work part-time? Is this allowed?

i have decided to study social work at uni and NOT nursing.. so i would be grateful if someone porovides me with what this course is like and whether or not i need expereince of working in this area. many thnks x