What Happened When I Went Back to My Nursing Career After a Decade Away
Once a Nurse, Always a Nurse…Right? Well, Kind-of…
Earlier this year, I returned to my roots and enrolled on a Return to Nursing Practice program with the intention of restarting my nursing career after a ten-year break. Here’s how it went.
Why I Quit Nursing
Before I tell you what happened when I went back, I should probably explain why I left in the first place.
Nurses leave the profession all the time, and the top three reasons you’ll generally come across are:
Leaving to start or raise a family. Either because they want to be a stay-at-home parent or because they can’t make the logistics of shiftwork and long hours work for their family.
The realisation that nursing isn’t for them after all (or that they can get paid far better doing something much less demanding!)
Burnout.
For me, however, it was secret option number four - a sudden diagnosis of a serious, long-term health condition.
Having been diagnosed with CIDP, I had been off work for almost a year when I finally made the decision to step away from my career and focus on my health and young family.
Though there were, admittedly, elements of all three of those other options mixed in with my decision, (I had a 4 and 2-year-old at the time, we were constantly juggling things as a family and I had skirted close to burnout a couple of times), I doubt I would have left nursing had I not become so seriously, and so suddenly ill.
Why I Went Back
I actually attempted to return to nursing, not all that long after leaving it. About two years after handing in my notice, I enrolled on a Return to Practice (RTP) course, but only got two weeks into it before having to step off. There were a number of reasons why it didn’t work out that time, but it mostly came down to the fact that wanting something doesn’t necessarily translate to having the emotional or practical resources to make it happen, and that forcing it can only get you so far!
That whole experience really put me off trying again for a long time, but that nagging voice in my head that kept saying, ‘Maybe…’ and asking, ‘What if…?’ never quite went away until finally, in 2022, I actually voiced it out loud to my husband.
I think his first words were, ‘Really? Are you sure?’
To which, my answer was, ‘No, but I think I have to try.’
I’ve written before about the things I missed about nursing and in the end, there were lots of reasons for my return.
Mainly, I wanted my career back. I’d worked bloody hard to get my nursing qualification, training for three long years at university, juggling shiftwork on the wards with assignments and exams. Plus, I’d specialised in neonates right out the gate, (more juggling of assignments and shiftwork), working in the field for almost 6 years before I stepped away.
I’d always felt a bit cheated that I’d done all that and then been thrust into my thirties careerless, so to speak. With my kids getting older and needing me less (in theory!) I felt it was time I reclaimed that side of me again.
I’d also just experienced full-on burnout in my freelancing writing career, and when I say burnout, I mean The Real Deal.
At one point last summer, I literally burst into tears partway through writing an article, stopped writing and couldn’t even face opening my laptop again for about a month. It was a dark time for me and the culmination of a tough few months.
I’d had some negative experiences with a client in terms of missed payments and poor communication, I’d been listed for a couple of writing competitions, but to no real avail, and I’d kept working and writing right through having Covid and miscarrying, until, finally, my brain had just had enough of it all.
Faced with the prospect of doing something else for a living (anything else!) I decided it may as well be the thing I was actually qualified to do! Plus, I hoped that a return to nursing might offer me the job satisfaction that I was looking for.
And last, but in no way least, I genuinely wanted to help. I knew going into it that the NHS was on its knees and crying out for staff and I wanted to erase that nagging guilt that I know many non-practicing healthcare and medical professionals feel by stepping into the fray and doing something to help.
My Return to Nursing to Nursing Experience
My first week of the RTP course was solely theory, based in university and having been out of education a wee while, it was pretty full on. Our timetable was packed and by mid-week, I knew I was suffering from Information Overload, and not really taking anything in, but I kept showing up anyway! Fortunately, my little cohort of returning nurses were all lovely and it made a daunting, overwhelming week so much easier, knowing we were all going through it together.
Once my first full week in uni was done, it was time for me to step back onto a ward and for me, this was the really scary part. Going back into nursing after a decade away, my biggest worry was that I'd have forgotten everything and that I wouldn't know how to ~ be a nurse ~ anymore so I was delighted to find that wasn't the case and that I slipped back into the role easily, as though there hadn't been a gap of ten years in-between shifts.
However, what was really tough was being unable to return to my speciality.
Not many people realise that you don’t need to be a children’s nurse to work in neonates. Neonatology is an entire specialty in itself, and the nurses I worked alongside were a mix of children’s nurses, midwives and adult nurses with intensive-care experience.
I was in the latter group, having trained as an adult nurse (or ‘general nurse’ in old money!) undertaking an ICU placement in my second year, which meant I was eligible to apply for neonatal nursing jobs when I qualified.
However, what this all meant was that in order to return to the section of the nursing register that I qualified under (i.e. Adult Nursing) I had to show competency in that field (i.e. prove that I could nurse adults!), which meant an immediate return to neonates was out of the question. I understood this when I signed up to the course, and figured I could handle nursing big people again for a short while and that maybe I’d eventually work my way back to neonates after completing the requirements of the course, (which would take approximately six months).
However, it was a real struggle to take so many backward steps, and to feel not so much that I’d gone back to how I felt as a newly qualified nurse - ready but a little unsure, competent but lacking confidence, but ALL THE WAY BACK to being a student again. After all, I’d technically never cared for adult patients as a qualified nurse! The moment I’d got my NMC Pin, I’d started my career as a staff nurse on a neonatal unit. Needless to say, nursing elderly patients on an acute medical ward was a very different ballgame!
After working from home as a freelance copywriter for a couple of years, I’d worried that getting up at the crack of dawn to leave the house early and being on my feet all day would be tough, but in reality, it didn’t bother me. I loved being out and about meeting new people, especially when I was able to spend time chatting to patients and would come home feeling I'd made the tiniest bit of difference to someone's day.
I had a study day in university once a fortnight and after the initial information overload, I loved being back in education and engaging that learning part of my brain again, taking notes, planning assignments and getting lost in the library like the nerd that I am!
Of course, I knew I was heading back into the NHS at a time of crisis so I was prepared to not get proper breaks and to be rushed off my feet and to be honest, none of that really fazed me.
What was sad, however, was seeing just how bad things really were on the frontline, how few qualified staff were on any given shift and how pressured those staff were. It was also scary to see the corners being cut and to realise how easily something could go wrong without anyone being to blame - aside from the very broken system we were all working in.
I looked around and saw that it was impossible for anyone to really nurse in the way they'd want to, or even the way they’d been trained to when there simply wasn’t the staff, the resources or the time. I started to question whether this was what I wanted for myself at the end of the course when it would be my turn to step up and take on the responsibility for what was - at times - an inordinate number of very poorly patients.
Sadly, it also became clear pretty early on that the support we were promised as returning nurses from both the university and the NHS trust I was employed by wasn’t all it had been painted to be, meaning there wasn’t really anyone I could turn to with all these concerns.
It also became clear that the ward I was working on was experiencing some major issues in terms of its leadership and management and as a result, had a very high staff turnover and was hugely reliant on agency staff, who didn’t always turn up.
Creeping Doubts…
Despite the difficulties, I tried to soldier on, telling myself this was what I wanted…only it became increasingly difficult to convince myself of the fact that what I was coming back to, was the same thing I’d walked away from all those years ago. It didn’t feel like it, and I didn’t feel the way I had back then either. I was starting to think that not only had nursing in the NHS changed drastically, but that I had undergone some pretty significant changes in that time too, changes that meant perhaps nursing wasn’t for me anymore.
Not because it was hard work (I love getting stuck in and being busy) or because it wasn’t glamorous (I’ve never been under any illusions about that) or because it’s poorly paid (though I do believe nurses are underpaid for their skills but that’s a whole other article!) No, it was something more fundamental than that.
A decade ago, I would have thought the problem was me, that I should just suck it up and get on with it but fortunately, I’m old enough now to know when something isn’t right, and not afraid to say so. I could see that if I continued, I would - perhaps, if I was lucky - make it to the end of the six-month-long course, albeit a frazzled shadow of myself on the brink of burnout. But for what? Is this really what I wanted for myself, for my life, for my family?
After many tears and sleepless nights, in the end, it was my body that made the decision for me when a few weeks in, I managed to injure my back for the first time in my life. I’m pretty sure it happened when I tried to prevent a very poorly, very confused, very sturdy, elderly man from climbing over his bed rails while attached to his high flow oxygen and IVs, but, of course, it could also have been any one of the times I had to assist a transfer to a commode, or perform a bed bath with half the safe number of staff...you get the picture.
In yet another case of ‘classic me’, it wasn’t until my body physically took away my options and I was signed off by my GP that my brain finally caught up and thought, ‘Hang on, what are we even doing, here?’
Even so, it wasn’t an easy decision to step off the course, and I considered so many other ways I might possibly make it work, like switching to a different clinical area, moving into community nursing, deferring my studies etc etc…but they all felt like they were sidestepping the crux of the matter. I’d been afraid I couldn’t be a nurse anymore and I’d proven to myself that I could but what I’d never stopped to ask, to truly consider, was, did I want to?
And that right there, was the hardest question to answer. Did I want this enough to make the sacrifices to my physical and mental health, to my work-life balance and my family life? I loved nursing but in the end, after much soul-searching, the answer was ‘no’.
I know that the NHS desperately needs nurses so the guilt I felt about that answer was huge, but I also knew I needed to own it and act on it. That I needed to admit that this wasn’t working out for me, that I couldn’t see a way that it would work out for me, and that I needed to step away from nursing once again, and this time, for good.
What Now?
Nursing was a huge part of my life and identity. For a decade it was what I did, who I was, how I related to the world. I think there will always be a part of me that is a nurse at heart but at 38, I'm finally drawing a line under my nursing career.
And do you know what? Aside from the lingering guilt at not using my qualification and skills (which I think will always be there) it feels good to be able to close the door on that chapter of my life and not feel the nagging, ‘What if?’ that has haunted me all these years.
Yes, I wanted to be a nurse, and I worked hard to make it happen. I wanted to specialise in neonatal nursing and I made that happen too. I had hoped one day to undertake further training and become dual-qualified as both a nurse and midwife so that I could work as a midwife in the NHS, but I didn’t manage to make that happen. Unfortunately, that’s something I’ve also had to close the door on since it won’t be possible for me without my nursing registration, but do you know what? That’s okay too.
20-year-old-Rebecca’s dreams are not the same as 38-year-old-Rebecca’s dreams, and honestly, it would be strange if they were, given that we’re leading very different lives.
We all have tough choices to make sometimes, between one direction or another, neither of which seems clearly wrong or right, and at the end of the day, you have to choose the path that’s right for you at the point at which you reach that fork in the road. You can’t ask your past self for directions, since she isn’t there and isn’t seeing what you’re seeing, and you can’t fast-forward and check in with your future self to get her opinion, you’ve just got to take a step down the path you think might be right, and then take another…and another.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes, you just have to accept that the dreams and ambitions you once had belong to the person you once were, and that person may not be who you are today. If you’re carrying long-held goals that don’t align with who you’re becoming, give yourself permission to put them down. Right now, if you need to.
And hey, if you need to try something out first - I know I certainly did, to know once and for all if it’s right - then there’s no shame in giving something a go before you say, ‘This isn’t for me. Thanks anyway.’
As for my future? Well, at least now I’ve ruled out one option. And one thing that remains constant, as you can see, is that I’m always, always writing.
