If you are considerin nursing as a career, my reccomendation is to run the other way!  Nursing is dirty, hard, unrewarded work  You work either bad hours, or long hours and are not  paid enough for your education level and years of experience.  It is not the romantic, den of compasion that it is cracked up to be.  Patients are demanding.  They have rights and you have none.  Every step you take is on camera and you are constantly being evaluated by some administrative type, who is all to eager to "write you up"!  Your day is full of life and death decisions, but when a patient wants a cup of coffee it takes presidence over the administration of their meds.  You work short staffed ALL the time and then some one calls off, too.  After going through physical therapy and chiropractic for my aching back at the age of 55, and after 27 years of nursing and several years as a nurses aide before that , I can tell you it is physically challenging, too.  So, you may still wnat to go into the medical field, but consider something with better hours, less time spent with the same patients and the opportunity to sit down.  What about sonography? 

I have been an RN for 16 years and I unfortunately have to agree with fagaan1553, the rewards of seeing your patient recover are wonderful but it happens all to infrequently in the LTC arena and what she said about always being under the microscope is DEAD ON!! That makes for an extremely difficult environment for developing a feeling of confidence and can have a definite negative impact on job performance and patient care. Navigating your practice can and ultimately will turn into your worst nightmare is the feeling which begins to be a constant companion. So my advice RUN IN ANOTHER DIRECTION. Unless you like this kind of mistreatment for all your love and kindness you will invest into others having none given of left for yourself. They don't care about YOU if you happen to make ANY mistake or get sick!