Any NP who really wanted to be MDs?

[Matt Norman]

Hey, are there any NPs out here who really wanted to be an MD. I am not downplaying NPs. I am just curious. I am in a situation where I have to concider this choice. I just finished nursing school and know I want to go on. at 25 i am young enought to do either option. However, I would like to talk to poeple who have been in the same situation and see how you feel about it. Thank you.

Matt


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[guylon07]

Hey Matt,
This is a hard dicision, and I have been there before. Let me give you a little advice. I decided to go on to med school. I finished my BSN, and practiced for a few years. I originally planned on going on to get my masters (NP) but after I had practiced for a while I quickly changed my mind. When you go out to practice as a RN you will most probably be over worked underpaid, and underappreciated by the hosp. You will probably end up with a bad back and knees because of the lack of staff in the units, and when the hosp is finished chewing you up they will spit you out for a cheaper new grad. I became so frustrated while practicing (you can read some of my other postings) that I wanted nothing to do with the nursing profession any longer. You are probably the least respected part of the healthcare team, however you will do the most work. Working in what I would call dangerous conditions because most hospitals have cut back to the bone, and the so called Professional nursing associations do NOTHING to help. So I still longed to futher my education and do more for the patients so I went to med school.
The actual curriculum of the NP program also helped me make my mind up. As you probably know. 90% of the material in nursing school is made up of usless paperwork, and that doubles in most masters programs. All of that nursing theory and research crap. (If you ask me nursing reasearch is just looking up someone elses real research and siteing it) My wife just finished her masters in nursing and is about to take her boards for NP, and I am so glad that I went into medcine.
Now you will hear those hard core nurses and other med students on here say how you should stay in nursing, (for one thing most med students have no idea how hard it is being a nurse, and the nurses feel that you are betraying the profession) but I say follow your heart, and pray about it. Do what you think is right for you. They will say "Oh look at all the time you will spend in Med school" "Oh med school is soooo tough" "You will go into great debt to become a physician" "Oh nursing school is so stressful", Well let me say that you will spend a year or two (you should at least have a years worth of experience before starting your NP program. Some schools will take you without a year but don't do it. I have many friends that have done it without any practical experience and when they finish they say they feel totally unprepared, so as far as time comparisons go you will have a few more years to finish your MD or DO (probably 6-8 years depending on what you want to do),but you have 1-2years to gain experience then 2-3 years in a masters program so you are looking at 4-5 years. My wife's schooling was very expensive so we had to take out loans, and she got her masters in Adult Health and now she is having great trouble finding a job as an NP. So it is up to you. Go out and practice for a while, and then make up your mind. You may find one of those rare legendary good jobs in the nursing profession and you may love it. So just make up your own mind. I am 29 and starting med shcool, and I know people in their late 30's and 40's who started med school. So you have time.
Good Luck,
JK

 

[ka1999]

HEY,
DID YOU FIND ANY OPPOSITION FROM THE ADMISSIONS COMMITTES AT YOUR MEDICAL SCHOOL, BECAUSE I WAS THINKING OF DOING MY BSN THEN GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL LATER ON. MY ADVISOR TOLD ME JUST GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL BECAUSE MY CHANCES OF BEING ADMITED WITH A BSN WERE POOR. IF SO WHY? I HEARD SOMETHING ABOUT COMMITMENT. WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE?

 

[nathansackett@e]

hello,
i just read a thread of your concerning the debate over NP school or MD school. I just wanted to thank you for your thread, as it really spoke to me. I am in a masters entry program in nursing right now, and i am dropping out at the end of this year to go on to be an MD. as previously mentioned, being at NP after your RN will still take atleast 3 years considering you are probably going to work for at least one year before being admitted. As a nurse, you work your ass off, and it seems like you will never be taken seriously. I think you have to follow you interests and listen to what it is you really want. I decided to go on to do my MD because I never wanted to feal like i settled for a masters because i didn't feel i could do med school.

THanks ,
Nathan

 

[obadya00]

i am a first year medical school student and i can't be any happier. Nursing is
a great field but after practicing for close to 2 years i had enough. iduring nursing school, i discovered nurse anesthesia. i thought that it would be a profession that mixes respect and money as a nurse. however, after talking to some nurse anesthetists, they told me to go to med school. in order to apply to the nurse anesthetist program, i would have to spend 2 years in a ICU preferably a SICU or a cardiac thoracic ICU and then apply and then go to school for 2-3 more years. i figured med school is only 4 years and then i have the ability of choosing whatever specialty i want. in addition, after 10 years of being a doc, you can change specialties and still pull in a great income.
med school is a great decision for me because of the respect,flexibility and money.

 

[deleted6669]

"after 10 years of being a doc, you can change specialties and still pull in a great income. "

ONLY IF YOU DO A SECOND RESIDENCY......YOU CAN'T JUST DECIDE AFTER 10 YRS AS A PEDIATRICIAN THAT YOU WILL GO WORK AS AN ER DOC FOR INSTANCE.

 

[CEB27]

Matt

I am in the same boat as you. I am finishing up my first year of a two yr. RN program. I tossed med. school around during college but ended with a low gpa. Someone mentioned nursing and I thought becoming a NP would be a good path. However, I really do not care for the program that I am in or the profession. I find myself more interested in the doctors during clinical rotations than the nurses. I respect nursing, it is just not for me.

I took the MCAT last month and I'm in the process of finishing up pre-reqs for med. school. I do not want to look back in 10 yrs and say "what if I went to med school?"

 

[RNnowDoclater]

Hey Matt,

I like you graduated from nursing school at 25. I'm 26 now and have been working at a large teaching hospital in the Pacific Northwest for almost a year. I can't complain about my job. The staffing is great, the environment is upbuilding, and the general medicine unit I am on exposes me to a vast variety of patient conditions. Most people probably would say I should stay with nursing.
I work with attendings, residents, and med students daily and get quite a glimpse at what they face. While I enjoy nursing, I am so driven to learn and I see my next step as attending med school. At work I find myself wanting to hang around the docs and ponder the patient's condition as they do. Do I regret going into nursing initially? Not at all. I think my experiences will greatly help me tremendously in my third and fourth years of med school. I also think that without nursing, I would have never realized I deeply desired to become a doctor.

 

[closet_premed?]

I would have to agree 100 percent with the above posters. I too was in a nursing program (AND program). Almost everything you do in nursing school is paperwork, in the form of care-plans and the like. Two of the reasons I have decided to pursue a career in medicine is to have more autonomy and because medicine is much more science based than nursing (just look at the curriculum for MS-I and MS-II years). I left that program and am now doing prerequisites for medicine. I am not sure if you went to an AND program also or got a BSN. If you got your BSN and decide to pursue a MD/DO degree, you may want to consider enrolling in a Post-baccalaureate Premedical program. These programs provide the fundamental coursework required for admission into medical school and I believe some of them afford their participants the opportunity to do research and volunteer work (both of which are looked highly upon by medical school admissions committee?s). Make sure to study for those MCAT?s also (if you already had to take the NCLEX-RN, you should be used to the idea of having to perform well on a standardized test). Also, medical school admissions committee?s may question why you want to leave nursing for medicine, so make sure that getting an MD/DO is something you want to do and anticipate such a question if you are selected for an interview. When I was in nursing school doing rotations, I found out that I would not want to do primary care. NP?s usually do things along the lines of primary care, unless you become a CRNA. Medicine would allow you to specialize in areas such as Radiology or Anesthesiology (my top two choices) that are not considered primary career. At the end of the day you will have to decide what really works for you. Pay no mind to admissions committees or other people who think that your nursing education will be of no value when trying to do medical school (your nursing background should help you out at least a little bit by the time you are MS-III or MS-IV) or to nurses who may say it is too difficult or that you are deserting the profession of nursing. Whatever your choice, the best of luck to you.

 

[closet_premed?]

Whoa...the OP started this thread almost FOUR years ago and people just started to post on it again!

 

[lloydchristmas]

Whoa...the OP started this thread almost FOUR years ago and people just started to post on it again!

wow... 4 years since the OP. Here's my 2 cents:

I originally started out premed and came within a few months of starting med school and actually stopped and went backwards in undergrad to go to nursing school and become a NP. There are many reasons I chose this route. One of my friends who is a MD convinced me and I'm still happy about the choice.

One of the biggies is the freakin malpractice in missouri. It's rediculous. It's driving practicing docs to other states.

I'm also saving about 6 years and several hundred thousand dollars in tuition/interest/lost income.

I originally set out to practice medicine, because I love it. I still do. I'll admit the training absolutely sucks. I just teach myself as much as I can along the way. Most of my classmates are *****s and make me wish there was the same grueling process to get in to NP school as it was to get in to med school.

I still think I made the right decision based on the current healthcare system situation and the direction it is taking... but it is painful to sit through class when I'm being taught examination technique and what to look for by a PharmD!!! They wanted some "feedback" from us senior students about the program and all I had to say (for fear I would be kicked out for telling them how I really felt) was "researching research about Sister Calista Roy's method of hand washing is great and all, but I still don't know how to read a chest x-ray or EKG". They still gave me a scowl from hell...

 

[mkey16]

Hello everyone,

New member joining. I started searching because I have to make a decision in a few months whether to return to med school. I got my nursing degree at a very academic institution, excellent program. But never practice. Instead I did a lot of research because I love it, bench/basic science/translation/clinical research. I got into a PhD program but decided on entering med school instead. I was miserable by the end of my second year. Not necessarily the school work but the lack of socialization and limited time with friends and family which lead me into depression. My school asked me to reconsidered leaving but I left and enter another excellent NP program that is accelerated/1 year. I definitely learned a lot from this program and it was very focused in critical care. During my rotation now in cardiothoracic ICU, I enjoyed it so much--yet at the same time I feel like I am back to square one,not knowing which route to take. I feel that I have a lot of opportunities but my indecisiveness is killing them all! I am about to finish my NP program and needs to decide whether to go on and work or go back to med school and finish out the years left and then residency. I love medicine, especially now that I am in clinical practice and not just book work! I am enthralled by it. But There are pros and cons for both. I recently just got married too. My husband is an MD but he thinks NP would fit our future family better, less stress on me, less days I need to work, less training. However, in the future, I can only go so far with an NP degree while an MD degree would get my further. The caveat to that would be, what if I come to motherhood and realized I want to be home with my kids more. Going partime with MD degree is not difficult but I feel that it would be a waste for all the training and money spent.

HELP!!

wow... 4 years since the OP. Here's my 2 cents:

I originally started out premed and came within a few months of starting med school and actually stopped and went backwards in undergrad to go to nursing school and become a NP. There are many reasons I chose this route. One of my friends who is a MD convinced me and I'm still happy about the choice.

One of the biggies is the freakin malpractice in missouri. It's rediculous. It's driving practicing docs to other states.

I'm also saving about 6 years and several hundred thousand dollars in tuition/interest/lost income.

I originally set out to practice medicine, because I love it. I still do. I'll admit the training absolutely sucks. I just teach myself as much as I can along the way. Most of my classmates are *****s and make me wish there was the same grueling process to get in to NP school as it was to get in to med school.

I still think I made the right decision based on the current healthcare system situation and the direction it is taking... but it is painful to sit through class when I'm being taught examination technique and what to look for by a PharmD!!! They wanted some "feedback" from us senior students about the program and all I had to say (for fear I would be kicked out for telling them how I really felt) was "researching research about Sister Calista Roy's method of hand washing is great and all, but I still don't know how to read a chest x-ray or EKG". They still gave me a scowl from hell...

 

[pamac]

This thread was started....16 years ago. The last comment was 12 years ago. A child born when this thread started would be getting a divers license. I'm not being critical, because a lot of folks don't think to look at dates when they are hoping to chime in and get some answers, but I'm simply impressed at the distance. The original poster was 25 when he first posted. He's now 41.

 

[Simon New]

Haha true that PACMAC, I wonder what decision he made...

 

[tylestol]

Can I make the suggestion that we bring this thread back to life? I would be very curious as to the opinions of other clinicians at this point. For me, I am currently practicing as a Family Nurse Practitioner, but I must admit that I have been seriously considering medical school, simply because I want more training and knowledge. To (heck) with the prestige, reimbursement, etc.; medicine is changing at a ridiculous pace, patients are getting more and more complicated, and I feel that more knowledge would serve my patients well. I would be very curious to hear from other NP's or PA's who have gone on to medical school, and their opinions as to whether or not their choice was "worthwhile".