I'm torn between heading towards becoming a Physical Therapist, Nurse, or a Pharmacist... I need some advice on what to follow. Any suggestions?

Don’t go to university then… take a year off… and find out what you really want… I changed my major from Philosophy to Psychology and back agian 17 times before I dropped out of university…Now I am interested in Physics…and I can’t get a second student loan

What classes are you taking right now?

I’m already at a university unfortunatly….. at the moment i’m following Physical Therapy because my parents wanted to know what ever the heck I was at least planning on following with my life, but that’s definitly staring to go from a straight like to a downhill spiral… and i’m taking generic classes at the moment

You have to follow your interests. If you are more people oriented, then nursing or physical therapy, if you are more profit/income oriented, pharmacist.

This really isn’t my area of expertise, but I have known people that do all three.

I second @YARNLADY‘s comment. As a physical therapist or nurse, your primary focus is on people; as a pharmacist, you compound and dispense drugs so there is less people-interaction unless you are running your own pharmacy (which is not uncommon).

Each of the three fields you name are distinctly different. It may be helpful to ask yourself what about each field appeals to you. As a nurse, you’d probably do routine work checking vitals and stuff like that, whereas as a PT your focus would be on rehab and customizing fitness programs for individuals overcoming physical problems. I’d imagine pharmacy to be much more chemistry intensive than the other two, with anatomy and biology major components of the other two, and biomechanics and kinesiology a large part of PT.

I’m guessing your interest in these fields lies in your desire to help people. There are a lot of ways about that, and you’ll probably be most successful if you find a career that aligns with your innate skills and talents.

I’ve been recommending Nicholas Lore’s book entitled The Pathfinder and Do What You Are (book about personality type; forget author’s name) to everyone that needs career guidance, as they have greatly helped me address this same problem. You need to get to the bottom of who you are and what you need and want out of life in order to answer this question.

You need to remember that this is your career. Take your time deciding what you really have a passion for. You don’t want to take one thing and decide halfway through that you want to take another, that’s a lot of time, effort and money down the drain.

Research each field carefully, search for descriptive videos for each career choice; you’ll be surprised the amount of information you can get from them.

You will have a broader array of options with nursing, because under nursing there are areas of specialty. Also, with nursing, your skills are more portable. Nurses are always able to find jobs.

Hard to imagine you are torn between those professions. Nursing and PT are very hands-on which pharmacists are not. I would not want to work where I touched people, so I would go with pharmacist. Also, you’ll have better hours . Be Dr. Smith instead of nurse Smith.

You have to consider the icky facter, a nurse will have to deal with, blood, vomit, poo. If thes things dont bother you, than you could be a nuse, otherwise, I would pick one of the other two.

Nurses can’t be replaced with automated machinery.

just get your bachelor of science for now. that way you’ll be able to go into any of those programs, plus, you’ll find out alot more about all of them cause people in your classes will be going into them too. thats what I did and I ended up choosing dental school

alright… For now i’ll still explore my options… But you guys have really really helped me with settling my organizational anxiety :)

If you want a lot of job options, I would choose nursing. You can work in any number of environments – hospitals, home care, psychiatric institutions, etc… Once you have your degree, you will be able to choose when and where you want to work – the job openings are numerous.

you wont know exactly until you get into your major classes unfortunately. I wouldn’t worry about it to be honest with you. All of those professions require a lot of work and most likely further schooling outside of a 4 year college. Personally I know that physical therapy and pharmacy are difficult to get into. Becoming a nurse would require less training and you could even graduate from training in just over a year in some programs. The fact that you are at a university and are just taking general classes right now, I would say lean towards the therapy or pharmacy. If you wanted to become a nurse, I do not think you are at the right school for it.

I am a senior in college now. I went into physical education and stuck with it for almost three years and realized it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. I changed my major this year with more of a focus on health, so I can go into the medical industry. I have more schooling to do, but at least I am taking courses that I enjoy more.

Bottomline is that whatever you go into, a further degree is almost necessary to take it to the next level. You have so many more options as far as applying for jobs and you are more applicable since you have more than one degree. If you ask most people whatever their degree was coming out of college, they probably got a job almost irrelevant to it. There are so many jobs to fill, things you could not even think of. If you graduate and get a degree, you are well on your way.

when i was younger i had (and still have) a lot of friends that were nurses. i never considered nursing because i did not like the idea of having to work on Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, nights, weekends, etc. I did not want to have to be at work when my friends were all somewhere partying, and i knew that when i got older and had a family i would not want to have to leave them on a holiday like Christmas to go to work. I always wanted a job with “office hours.” I think most physical therapists, even in a hospital, have pretty much “office hours.” They might start as early as 8, and work as late as 6. They may do occasional weekends. A pharmacist will probably have to work somewhere that would be open late, like till 11, for example at a CVS. those are just some other factors that will play into your lifestyle, because your job plays a part in your lifestyle.