Thinking of changing my career path, help!

[CleverThought]

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Hi guys!

Here is some background about me. When I decided to go to college I was initially uneasy about my major. I could see myself doing everything. I was interested in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, and even considered pharmacy.

I knew I wanted patient interaction, so I decided on nursing.

Fast forward to now, I'm in nursing school with a 3.96 GPA and a 4.0 science GPA. I'm picking up either a psychology or a biology minor. I work at a local hospital as a tech and it has been an amazing experience. But, I've kind of realized I don't want to be a bedside nurse.

I greatly dislike the lack of autonomy and how nurses have to go to a doctor for every little thing. I also thought I'd go straight to grad school and pursue becoming a nurse practitioner. However, I've come to the conclusion that becoming an NP is what everyone is doing in nursing and I feel that there will be a great deal of saturation. Plus, although in my state NP's can practice independently I won't be allowed to handle complex cases.

So, recently I've been thinking of changing my career path. Obviously many would see me transitioning to medicine, but I rarely see the MD's at the hospital with the patients and as mentioned earlier I want patient interaction and patient relationship (although I greatly respect doctors and that wasn't meant to be insulting).

I've always been intrigued by dentistry and considered it a career option, but now I'm thinking it seriously. I've been looking at several schools and I think it might be doable.

There is one problem, I'm not going to change my major. I'm too far in the program that switching majors will delay my graduation by 3 or more semesters. I am positive I can fit in the additional classes I would need for admittance into dental school, such as physics. Plus, nursing is a decent fall back career in case I don't get in to dental school, because I honestly don't know what I would do with a biology degree if I didn't get into a program.

In applications will it look bad having a nursing degree? I'm applying to one program where you can get early admittance (as long as you apply 2 years before you would enter the program) I'm sure it's competitive to get early admittance, but it is a top choice school of mine (so far in my short-lived research) and I think it may be a decent gauge of my chances.

I'm just honestly worried about them seeing a nursing degree as being non committed. I feel I have everything else right. I've done research projects, tons of service projects and trips, I have a pretty decent GPA, am in leadership positions in several organizations, and I've organized some shadowing experiences to make sure this is what I want.

What do you guys think?

 

[jeffity]

I don't think it's a big deal. Perhaps you'll find situations where you may need to explain yourself, but if you're sincere and honest about it all, then there's nothing to worry about.

Search 'nursing, nurse, etc' in the forums here and you'll see you are certainly not alone in your desire to pursue dentistry from the nursing field.

 

[Doc Smile]

Well, I am a little biased but I say go for the change into dentistry. Your major doenst matter as long as you have all the prereqs. Nurisng is hard and if you can handle getting a near perfect GPA in nursing school, you will do well in the upper level bio/chem prereqs as well as dental school! Plus, your reasoning for a career change is very introspective and will go well while applying and writing a PS.

 

[bing12]

just be ready to explain yourself on the change of heart.

 

[peanutb123]

just be ready to explain yourself on the change of heart.

bing12 is absolutely correct. you need to explain yourself but not necessarily no the change of heart part.

you see you can use your degree as an tactical advantage.
Nursing to dentistry gives you a competitive edge than most of the students who apply to dental schools here is the reason why. Pardon my ignorance towards medicine. But you know more medical stuff than most of the dental students and not only that you would know how to react in certain situations. Some of the schools that i have visited for interview even said that they have seminars to teach dental students little bit of medicine so that they would know how to react under certain situations. Trust me if you play your cards right and show them how you can use your degree in dental school and in dentistry that would make an awesome ps.

i think you know where i am going with this, even if you get asked why dentistry not medicine you can consider an answer along the lines of what i said.

good luck

 

[mr24]

Have you thought of being a crna? Thats a sweet set up in my opinion.
But I think your transition to dental would be a good choice and very double.

 

[CleverThought]

Have you thought of being a crna? Thats a sweet set up in my opinion.
But I think your transition to dental would be a good choice and very double.

I have considered CRNA and although it seems interesting, I don't feel that there would be enough patient interaction (They're sleeping through 85% of it)

Plus, it would be a long, long path. You need 1-2 years of ICU experience, but to get that you need to put in 1-2 years on a med-surg floor generally. So, it would take me 2-4 years to go to school for 3-4 years.

I can't say that passing gas is the career choice for me 😀

 

[dentalWorks]

Hi guys!

Here is some background about me. When I decided to go to college I was initially uneasy about my major. I could see myself doing everything. I was interested in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, and even considered pharmacy.

I knew I wanted patient interaction, so I decided on nursing.

Fast forward to now, I'm in nursing school with a 3.96 GPA and a 4.0 science GPA. I'm picking up either a psychology or a biology minor. I work at a local hospital as a tech and it has been an amazing experience. But, I've kind of realized I don't want to be a bedside nurse.

I greatly dislike the lack of autonomy and how nurses have to go to a doctor for every little thing. I also thought I'd go straight to grad school and pursue becoming a nurse practitioner. However, I've come to the conclusion that becoming an NP is what everyone is doing in nursing and I feel that there will be a great deal of saturation. Plus, although in my state NP's can practice independently I won't be allowed to handle complex cases.

So, recently I've been thinking of changing my career path. Obviously many would see me transitioning to medicine, but I rarely see the MD's at the hospital with the patients and as mentioned earlier I want patient interaction and patient relationship (although I greatly respect doctors and that wasn't meant to be insulting).

I've always been intrigued by dentistry and considered it a career option, but now I'm thinking it seriously. I've been looking at several schools and I think it might be doable.

There is one problem, I'm not going to change my major. I'm too far in the program that switching majors will delay my graduation by 3 or more semesters. I am positive I can fit in the additional classes I would need for admittance into dental school, such as physics. Plus, nursing is a decent fall back career in case I don't get in to dental school, because I honestly don't know what I would do with a biology degree if I didn't get into a program.

In applications will it look bad having a nursing degree? I'm applying to one program where you can get early admittance (as long as you apply 2 years before you would enter the program) I'm sure it's competitive to get early admittance, but it is a top choice school of mine (so far in my short-lived research) and I think it may be a decent gauge of my chances.

I'm just honestly worried about them seeing a nursing degree as being non committed. I feel I have everything else right. I've done research projects, tons of service projects and trips, I have a pretty decent GPA, am in leadership positions in several organizations, and I've organized some shadowing experiences to make sure this is what I want.

What do you guys think?

No, there is nothing wrong with having a nursing degree. People are allowed to change their minds the same way non-traditional pre-dents (such as myself) changed from previous careers into dentistry (me = ex software engineer)

The most important criteria for admission into dental school is pure numbers. If you got the GPA and DAT, thats about 90% of the battle. I would recommend you get some dentistry shadowing, so you can actually have a legitimate excuse as to why you've decided to pursue this area of healthcare. Keep your grades high, take whatever else pre-dental course you need, and enjoy ur future acceptances.

Oh and another thing, I would highly encourage you to apply to more than 1 or 2 schools. With today's massive competition, you might not make it into your #1 and #2, its always a good idea to have some safety schools.

 

[bipster10]

I agree with everyone that in no way does having a nursing Major hold you back. In fact, I think it provides an excellent chance for you to explain why you chose dentistry when you get that annoying question at interview "why denistry".