Ten Personality Traits All Registered Nurses Should Have
1. Love being busy
When you’re at home, do you love sitting in front of the television for hours? Do you surf the Internet endlessly, or play video games as a hobby? If so, nursing probably isn’t for you.
If you are the type of person that hates resting, and always has to be on the move, whether it be hiking, cleaning, or dancing all night long at the club, you may have the right personality.
Nursing is not friendly to people that need rest periods to sit and take a breather. Instead, it rewards those that crave absolute bedlam and chaos.
2. Love meeting strangers
Are you shy? A wallflower? Hate small talk or learning about people’s lives? Then nursing probably isn’t for you.
If you are the type of person that will start up a conversation with the strange homeless man that sits next to you on the bus, or have no problem approaching strangers in a bar, then you may have the right personality.
In nursing, you will be constantly forced to approach strangers, from intimidating doctors to smelly drug-addicted homeless people. And you will need to be comfortable spending hours with nosey judgmental family members staring over your shoulder, all while making happy small talk.
Love to talk and be outgoing!
3. Be a great multi-tasker
You will rarely get to do one thing at a time as a nurse. It is not unusual to be working on a dressing, while a resident is bombarding you with questions about a second patient, all while a unit clerk is telling you that a third patient just had a bowel movement and is screaming for help.
If you lack the ability to do several things at once with quality, then nursing may not be right for you.
4. Be OK with body fluids
If you have to close your eyes during slasher movies because blood and guts make you cry, nauseous, or faint, then nursing might not be for you.
I have seen nurses scream when they got a drop of blood on their arm, vomit when a patient spewed sputum from their trach, fainted at the site of feces, or refuse to so much as gently touch a patient’s shoulder without three pairs of gloves on “just in case.” It’s ridiculous.
When you are a nurse, you will be surrounded by germs, and be constantly splashed with body fluids. Sometimes you will get blood in your eyes, poo on your legs, injure yourself with a used needle, or have to eat lunch after just having your hands elbow deep in someone’s abdominal wound.
If you’re OK with all of this, nursing may be right from you.
5. Love physical labour
Do you look forward to moving? Does landscaping or mowing a lawn sound fun to you? Does your body feel awful if you haven’t jogged, worked out, or used it physically for a couple days? Then nursing may be right for you.
There is a shocking amount of physical labour in nursing. In fact, being a floor nurse is probably one of the most physically exhausting jobs in existence.
6. Be thick-skinned
Frankly, nurses and doctors can be mean. They shouldn’t be, considering they are all well-trained professionals who should be able to communicate without resorting to cattiness and backstabbing. But, unfortunately, this isn’t always the case.
You will be bombarded with people telling you what you did wrong, and rarely get to hear about the things you do right.
You will frequently encounter nurses that disagree with your nursing style and will reject it with noisy diatribes against you. A good nurse needs to be able to let that kind of personality bounce off them.
7. Thirst for new knowledge
When you hear something that you don’t understand (like a word or concept), do you immediately jump on the Internet and do research? Do you love watching Jeopardy because you learn new things and get to show off your deep knowledge of trivia? If yes, then you might be perfect for nursing.
You will constantly be bombarded with new diseases, technologies, and treatments that you have never seen before. You will need to be constantly learning. You need to be excited about change. You will need to be able to store what seems like an infinite stream of factoids in your brain.
If you are the type of person that hates change, despises learning new things, accepts that things are “fine the way they are.” Then nursing might not be right for you. You will be left behind in the dust wondering why all the young nurses get cranky and roll their eyes every time you bring out another, “I remember the way we used to do it” story.
8. Hate routine
Some people are comforted by routine. They like having their day laid out for them, knowing exactly what will happen, and when. They like knowing that every day will look relatively the same. These people don’t make good nurses.
To be a good nurse, you need to be flexible, hate routine, and want every day to be so different from the one before that it will leave your head spinning. As a nurse, your goals and plans for the day change on a minute-by-minute bases.
If your mouth waters at the idea of pure chaos, then nursing may be right for you.
9. Be an adrenaline junkie
I work in an ICU where we care for the sickest of the sick patients. We respond to code blues. We deal with unstable and “crashing” patients all the time.
But nothing is more frustrating than a nurse who hides away, hoping they get the easiest patient, and cringes at the thought of getting called to a code blue, or lives in fear that their patient’s blood pressure may change.
If you are getting into nursing, be the person that finds the idea of giving CPR to a patient who is bleeding uncontrollably all over the floor exciting….not scary.
10. Have an undying positive energy
I saved this one till the last because it is the rarest. Of all the amazing nurses that I have known, the ones that stand out as all stars are the ones that maintain a positive energy regardless of any situation they are put in.
If you are moody, cranky, angry, and frequently just plain sad, then nursing may not be for you. The first nine items on this list are enough to make any human being crawl back under the covers and forget that the world exists.
But, if you are able to laugh it all off and smile while your sanity crumbles around you, then you will be the best of the best.
October 5th, 2010 at 21:09
Hi! Good to see you back! Great tips all round for anyone contemplating nursing. I tried to talk one of my sons into nursing but he gave up on the idea after I told him he would have to wash patients and work shift work that including working weekends. Take Care, Peter
October 6th, 2010 at 05:27
Great list!!! Although I have to say, before I started training as a nurse I was completely intimitaded by bodily fluids. Needless to say I got over it FAST.
October 7th, 2010 at 15:35
I like this list, but disagree with #1. I love all of those things on my days off:)
ps: welcome back to this blog.
October 27th, 2010 at 12:14
glad you’re back to blogging!!
December 19th, 2010 at 20:47
Hi! I’m doing my Christmas rounds before Santa arrives. Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Take Care, Peter
February 11th, 2011 at 09:40
Mate! Have you given up on blogging?
February 20th, 2011 at 05:30
There’s more to life than Tweeting!
June 11th, 2011 at 00:11
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June 30th, 2011 at 04:33
Wow, Fantastic article, it’s so helpful to me, and your blog is very good,
I’ve learned a lot from your blog here, Keep on going, my friend, I will keep an eye on it,
June 30th, 2011 at 21:42
Thank you, thats very interesting information. I need to share with my friends.
July 7th, 2011 at 04:41
good one..keep it up.
July 7th, 2011 at 04:43
nice one..
August 13th, 2011 at 07:56
Really love this blog. The stories are all so touching. Thanks so much for sharing.
August 27th, 2011 at 23:35
There’s more to life than Tweeting
September 12th, 2011 at 21:17
love the last one..it made me smile. I’ll keep it in mind.
September 18th, 2011 at 19:19
Hi,
I think being a nurse sometimes being willing to have a position on things, like what it takes to be a nurse, and be willing to argue for one’s position. I think many of your points have much truth behind them. But, some are just stereotypes…
Number one is about being busy and doing well in chaotic situations. I have to say that I am busy at work, getting tasks done, assessing, communicating, and so forth. However, when I get home, I often find myself not really wanting to jump right into cleaning up the house without stop. I want a break, so that I can then go back to work rested…and with my enthusiasm recharged. Nurses are not necesarily always on the go. And as for chaos, I have to say that I like a certain amount or kind of chaos. I like to be able to plan my shift. I work in an ICU. I’m able to anticipate much of what my patients will need during my next 12 hours. I get my satisfaction from being able to accomplish the goals I’ve set for my patient. I don’t like working in the ED where for me the shift is much less predictable. The number of patients is larger and they have unknowns I cannot anticipate. I can only take a certain amount of uncertainty…and, I don’t believe this makes me any less of a nurse. Some nurses are better on med-surg, some in pediatrics, some in ICU, and so on. They have different tolerances for chaos and uncertainty.
Number 4 has to do with being able to tolerate work with body fluids. I am persuaded that people who can’t take some slasher movies might very well be good tough as nails nurses. Movie blood and gore is most often no very realistic. The blood and gore splatter is intended to shock and horrify, and in doing that, there most often doesn’t have to be very much realism. People are not, for exampkle, showing they are experiencing very much pain or fear…any real emotional or spiritual pain. So, when one enjoys a good slasher movie, this might not mean that you could tolerate cleaning up or working in an environment with real fluids , pain, or suffering.
I don’t like watching real pain and suffering in American movies because most often, if the film can depict that kind of reality, I want to say, there’s a chance that the film will manipulate my feelings in ways that I will not be able to tolerate….There are some movies that make fair points that involve pain and suffering. But, these may not be easy to watch. And that difficulty does not mean one would not be cut out for nursing. People who can pick up on the pain and suffering of others, and find it difficult to have to stand around doing nothing about it, probably would make pretty good nurses.
I want to dispute your last point, “…if you are able to laugh it all off and smile while your sanity crumbles around you, then you will be the best of the best..” It’s possible that you are misstating your point. I do not admire people who smile and laugh when their sanity is crumbling. I think people like that are having great difficulties and react by laughing and smiling and generally, not able to deal with their problems. It’s not much different that a person cries and frowns when their sanity is crumbling. I want to help someone start solving some of the problems that is challenging their “sanity.” Maybe they need some help with their finances. Maybe they don’t know what to do when they are unemployed. I want these people to deal with these problems not…laugh and smile about it. In the same way, I don’t want a doctor to come up to me laughing and smiling telling me that I have cancer and he doesn’t know what to do about it.
Happy smiling nurses and not knowledgeable and competent nurses.
In fact, the best nurses are sometimes the grumpiest.
September 29th, 2011 at 01:57
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October 17th, 2011 at 07:44
This is really great. Sometimes I don’t think people get what goes into being a nurse, how much it requires, (especially energy and stress – see the ‘adrenaline junkie’ bit). People expect nursing care with a smile, but it can be really hard to maintain a happy, smiling attitude when you’ve just lost a patient, or encountered a difficult one. More people should read this – maybe have it as a hand-out in the waiting room?
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February 21st, 2012 at 03:41
I am a new follower! I loved reading this, as I am a newer Cardio vascular ICU nurse myself! Hoping to find new RN blogger friends! Thanks for sharing!