I am a nurse in a medical/surgical ICU, I've been working there for about a year.
Pros: the hours.... a nurse typically works 3 days a week, 12 hour shifts (although many shifts run over about an hour or 2 because it's very easy to get behind and you have to catch up on charting at the end of the shift. Another good thing is that you can divert responsibility to the doctor. If something is wrong with the patient, you always have the doctor to call, then you'll get an order from him, then carry out the order. A lot of the work is pretty straight forward. You start to see the the same diseases over and over again, and you can start to anticipate what the doctor is going to order. Another pro is that you get a lot of patient interaction. Well this might be a con depending on your personality and whether or not you're a people person.
Cons: Being a nurse is very skill intensive. You are doing a lot of basic skills (med administration, cleaning patients up, recording input and outputs, charting, mouth care). On top of all the skills you are required to do, you also have to be aware of the patient's condition and if something changes you need to be aware of that. For instance, a pt comes back from surgery and their blood pressure is dropping. You need to be aware that this is something that could potentially be serious, know to call the doctor, and hope you can reach him. If not you can go to someone else (NP/PA), they'll give you orders then you follow out the orders. This can be stressful because you have a lot of responsibility but you don't have a whole lot of authority. The doctors and the PA's are the ones with the authority, so this can be kind of scary/stressful at times.
I can't really speak so much to the pros and cons of being a PA/NP, but from what I've seen on my unit, they pretty much function in the same capacity as a physician, (assessing patients, checking labs, writing orders) In clinic settings they have a lot of autonomy and depending on the doctor they work under, a lot of NP's in my state can see pt's and prescribe medications independently.
To shadow a nurse, go to the websites of hospitals in your area and they should have information on shadowing. If not, just call up there, I'm sure some hospitals would have no problem with you shadowing.
Please do think long and hard about what you want to do. I'm deciding now that I want to become a doctor, but I'm getting older and I wish I could have made this decision earlier. If you have any questions please feel free to PM me.
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