From flexibility to money to time spent with patients, intensive care nurse Rhianna Ferial lets viewers know why she chose the nursing path instead of medical school.
Watch the video above or read the transcript below:
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. Welcome to today's video. Today, I'm going to address a topic that I get asked all the time and that is why I decided not to go to med school or why I didn't go to med school. As you know, I'm in nurse anesthesia school or CRNA school. I'm in a doctorate level program that specializes in anesthesia. I get this question all the time and I wanted to answer it once and for all in a video and kind of explain my reasoning.
But first up, I wanted to be completely upfront and honest with you guys and tell you that honestly I never considered med school. It wasn't on my path. That wasn't on my radar. I never pursued it at all. I didn't change paths. I just really didn't want to go to med school and I never even thought about it. I always was on the nursing path and always wanted to be a nurse.
With that being said, I wanted to reflect on some reasons why I think I went down the nursing path instead of the med school path, and also some reasons that I've learned since then that make me thankful that I chose the path I did. I do not regret taking the nursing path at all. I don't ever wish I could go to med school or become a doctor. It's not in my thoughts. I'm very thankful that I chose nursing. I love my career so I'm very happy with my choice. With that being said, let's get into some of the reasons why I did not go to med school.
Of course, reason #1 is I already told you it wasn't a consideration. It wasn't in my plan at all, so that's kind of obvious. But reason #2 I think is that I wanted to have more patient interaction. I wanted to be with the patient all day and with them the whole shift. I didn't want to be going around from patient to patient only spending a little time with each one. That's an important role as well. I'm not saying that doctors don't have patient interaction. I'm just saying they have less interaction with more patients. I would rather have more interaction with less patients, so that's really just a preference thing. I want to be there for them during the very vulnerable times and the hard and unseen times. I want to take care of them and their families. That's a big reason I went into nursing in the beginning is because it's meaningful work, as I mentioned in previous videos. It really makes me feel fulfilled and I feel like I'm making a difference in the world.
Reason #2 is I could work all throughout nursing school. I could save up enough money to pay my tuition as I went. I got my associates degree. I was working as a CNA while I did that and then I started working as an RN. I got my Bachelor's and now I'm in grad school to become a CRNA. I'm also working as an RN in the ICU.
It's more flexible as far as working goes and that's something that's very important to me. That's not really something that made my decision, but it's something that I think is important to consider.
Another huge reason is work is not my life and I need a work-like balance. As much as I love nursing, anesthesia, and everything that I'm doing, I also love a lot of other things like travel, animals, my husband, and doing things outside of work. I don't want to have work consuming my life. A lot of doctors, surgeons, and specialists -- just doctors overall -- are at work all the time. They're always on call. They always have to be available. I don't want that to be my life. I want to do my work, leave, and then have my own personal time that doesn't have anything to do with work. I don't want to be worrying about people calling me and having to go back in.
That's a huge benefit of nursing to me is you get to have that patient interaction. You get to specialize. You get to do all that stuff. But also once you leave, another nurse is there. They take your place and you're not responsible for things when you're at home.
There are a lot of perks about nursing that people don't realize. I made a video about the top 10 reasons why nursing is awesome and I'll link that in the description below. But just to quickly go over some of that stuff, if you haven't seen that video, is we have flexible work schedules. We're able to work whatever shifts and hours we want. We're able to switch specialties if we get bored, burnt out of one, or realize we're passionate about something else. We're able to pursue a higher education if we want to, but we don't have to because we're perfectly fine with just having an associates, bachelors, and being a registered nurse. But if you do want to go further, it's very easy. A lot of times, the hospital will pay for you to do that and you can continue working throughout the process.
We're able to take a lot of time off and it doesn't really affect our career. I know that doctors have more trouble taking off like several months. If they want to take off six months to a year to travel, that would be really hard because they have an established patient group and need to be there for them. But nurses, really I could quit my job tomorrow. I could go travel South America for six months and then I could come right back and be a nurse. That's something that's very important to me. That's part of the flexibility aspect that I love and the work-life balance. I don't want work to be my whole life. I want to be able to do what I want outside of that.
That kind of leads into travel nursing, which is another huge perk. When I was travel nursing, I would work three-month assignments and then travel internationally for like a month in between my assignments. That was so awesome. I was able to advance my career, keep moving forward in nursing, and get different experiences in different hospitals while also pursuing my other passion, which is travel.
Pay is also a huge flexible thing. You can make as little or as much as you want as a nurse, depending on how much you want to work. If I decide that I only want to work part-time and I don't really care about the money that much, I can do that. If I decide I wanted to work full-time and overtime because I'm saving up for something, I can do that as well. I'm not completely sure how doctors get paid or how that would work for them, but I think they have more trouble going part-time than we do.
I will go ahead and touch on the schooling right now, which wasn't part of my decision because I didn't consider med school, but I know it's kind of deterred a lot of people. Med students go to undergrad for four years usually in like biology, chemistry, something like that, some kind of science degree, and then they go to medical school for four years. Then depending on what specialty they choose, they go to their residency for another four plus years.
Nurses can get their associates degree in as little as two to three years. It's usually one-year prerequisites and then two years in nursing school. Then you can be a registered nurse and working as a nurse out in the field. During that time, you can pursue your bachelor's degree, which is a four-year degree, so you already have the two or three under your belt. You either need one or two more to get your bachelor's.
Now, when you really start getting comparable in the schooling aspect to medical school or to the amount of work that they do is when you start talking about graduate school. For me personally, I decided to go to nursing anesthesia school to become a CRNA. I did three years for my associates degree and then did another year for my bachelor's degree, so that's four total. Then, I worked as a nurse for two and a half years, so that's six and a half years. Now, I have three years of CRNA school, so that's nine and a half years. I could do simple math without counting it out.
Now, during this whole entire nine and a half years, I've been working in the field. During nursing school, I was a CNA. During the whole RN experience, I was an ICU nurse. Then during CRNA school, I'm working all week in the OR. I'm also working as an ICU nurse on the side per diem.
There's a lot of clinical experience there. I just wanted to throw that out there to try and compare the timelines for you a little bit. I think nursing school is more clinical. You have more clinical hours. Med school is more academic. You have a lot of classes, tests, and things like that before you're allowed to get out and start getting your clinical experience. At least, that's what I've seen. I'm not an expert on medical school by any means. If you're in medical school and you disagree, feel free to comment below.
That about wraps up why I didn't go to medical school. I wanted to explain that for you guys because you've been very interested why I chose nurse anesthesia instead of becoming an anesthesiologist or a medical doctor. Those are kind of my reasons. I actually didn't know I was going to go into anesthesia when I chose nursing. It was just something that happened later down the line.
I went into nursing for the reasons I mentioned. I wanted to be an ER, ICU, or a flight nurse and I ended up getting really passionate about anesthesia and pursuing that, which is so awesome. In nursing, you can really become passionate about anything. Pursue it because you're not stuck to one specialty.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope you found it helpful and informative. I hope that you can relate to what I'm saying a little bit if you're a nurse. If you're not a nurse and you're a doctor and you're watching this video -- or you're pursuing medicine -- please feel free to comment below and tell me your reasonings of why you wanted to be a doctor instead of a nurse because I'm also very curious. I know there are lots of different reasons for that.
As always, thank you so much for watching this video. If you liked it, please give it a thumbs up. If you want to see more videos like this, please subscribe and comment below with any videos that you might want to see in the future. As always, I hope you guys have an amazing week and I will see you next week.