CONFESSION OF A NON-PRACTICING REGISTERED NURSE 1

As a registered nurse, I have always believed in the value of compassionate care and nurses' vital role in the healthcare system. However, I've also come to understand why many of us are choosing to leave clinical practice. Despite the growing need for skilled healthcare workers, more and more registered nurses (RNs) are stepping away from bedside roles. In this post, I want to share the personal and systemic reasons behind this shift—reasons that are often felt but not always voiced.

What Drives Nurses to Reconsider Another Field of Profession?

1. Burnout and Emotional Fatigue

Especially in Government hospitals, nurses caring for patients day after day, especially under pressure, take a toll on both the body and mind. I, for one, often felt drained, not just physically, but emotionally. Every shift comes with different experiences, learning, heartbreak, and reflection. Burnout became a real issue for me as it has for many other nurses who work long hours under intense stress (Hallaran & Jessup, 2023).

2. Struggles with Work-Life Balance

I struggled to keep up with family life while working, shifting schedules, and extended hours. I know I have signed up for it and I should not be complaining about it, but at some point, we need to stop and ask, "Will my family understand what I am doing? Will they be alright in the care of others when they are sick, the fact that I am available and qualified to be at their service, however, in the service of others?" It may be a petty concern to some, but it may depend on how you value your family over your principles. Maybe it's just choosing which sacrifice you have to make. I guess I chose my sacrifice in pursuit of my family. Am I loving it? Oh yes, I am.

3. Health and Safety Concerns

The risk nurses are being exposed to in the hospital is unpredictable. From lifting patients to being exposed to infections and even workplace violence, there are moments that, despite your training in martial arts and other precautionary measures, you still fear for your life. For your Health? For the people you go home to every day? There was a time when a patient was admitted to the hospital with deep injuries and whispered in your ear that he had just killed someone, and drove to the hospital just for treatment, his injuries were caused by the person whom he had just killed. This is just one scenario where you question the situation and tremble in fear for your life, and your mind is buffering on what to do while facing a person who claims he just killed a person a moment ago. What did I do? Despite my panic and fear? I treated him with care and reported the incident to my supervisor, and interventions were made afterward. My point is that safety concerns come up every day when we go on our shift, and we accept them as they are. Is it all worth it? Yes, it is. Do we have other choices? Yes, we have.

4. Poor pay and Limited Benefits

Let us be honest, many of us are underpaid. When we compare our compensation to the workload, the balance just isn't there. Do you agree? This drives many to seek opportunities abroad or move into careers that offer better financial stability (Ni et al., 2023). Does your salary cover your basic living expenses, especially for those who have dependents? Barely not, right? These economic challenges make it difficult to justify staying in the profession even if you love it so much. For many of my colleagues—and myself included at one point—the idea of working overseas or transitioning to industries like the BPO sector or corporate healthcare became more appealing. Those opportunities not only offered better pay but also came with structured benefits, regular hours, and better work-life balance.

So that's all for personal experiences. I have more, but I will share it in the following blogs. Do you think beyond this personal challenge (maybe similar or not), there are larger problems within the healthcare system that make clinical nursing unsustainable for many of us?

I believe solving this issue of nurses transitioning to other career paths requires empathy and action. If we want to keep more nurses in clinical roles, we also need fundamental changes across the system. It would be nice to have support programs for nurses too, such as mental health support groups, mentorship for nurses planning to return to the nursing profession, safe workload management, clear career development pathways, and, of course, better benefits and pay (nurses are, after all, humans too).