Admit it. We all want to wear our almost forgotten-white-uniform-stuck-in-the-cabinet-for-years. We have worked hard for it for four years anyway plus a year for the board exam. So, let us just be truthful. No matter how we become bitter to nurse life because we can’t get any real job. For sure, deep inside us, there always remains something we term as “longing”.

Take note that “longing” is not just the typical urge to have a job, or a reward for the long years we have taken in nursing college life. It actually has a long list. In fact, it can be explained in 5 stages.

Reward / Planning Stage: long to finally become one – a Registered Nurse

Right after we saw our names included in the NLE Result, I tell you, a “nurse job” is not the first thing that comes in our mind. It would always be, “celebration” “beers” “vacation” “gifts” and lots of “rewards”. But in between, that’s the time when the planning for a nursing job comes.

You will have all the time for laughs, stories, fun and enjoyment but out from nowhere, you’ll be surprisingly in serious mode and ask each and everybody as when, what plans you’ll take and how of becoming a real Registered nurse.

Dilemma Stage: having second thoughts of becoming a Nurse

After the whole month of tipsiness and soberness, you face now the dilemma as to becoming a Registered Nurse. The longing here to become one is actually at its peak, however, there is fear within you that to the number of nurses out there, the nurse jobs might not accommodate everybody and so is to you. So, you come to a dilemma stage, whether to become a Nurse as of the moment or not yet.

I bet the common answer for that would be “to find any job at a particular” “to save” as of the moment. Am I right?

Compensation / Defense Mechanism Stage: “at least I have a job than being an unemployed nurse”

No questions asked, you are happy with your job, you can now buy all you want and you are even earning more than a typical nurse in the country would earn. However, how come by the time you scroll the Facebook newsfeed, you felt sadness every time you see your batch mates wearing their white uniform and really fulfilling their dreams of becoming a nurse?

I gotcha. This is the compensation / Defense Mechanism Stage that no matter how big the smile you are wearing, behind it is a flat affect / a-still-determined poker face to soon become a nurse. There aren’t just nurse jobs yet available but soon if there’ll be, you’ll never let that pass. For the meantime, you settle for what is at present.

Out of the Blue Decision Stage: long to finally become one or back again as a Nurse

Either you just lost your job at a particular, can’t find meaning anymore to your current job or you just felt some longing within. Whatever that is, you are now at the out of the blue decision stage. You now do some real actions to motivate yourself and push to really become one.

However, you do not necessarily end up as a Nurse at this stage.

Final Decision Stage: “I long to be a Registered Nurse”

The previous stage was out of the blue, this time it is already the final decision. Meaning, you don’t anymore care for the jobs being offered to you. You are now fully determined to really become one.

This time, you’ll be successful in becoming one already and finally saying, “I am a Registered Nurse.”

So, what stage are you now, nurses?