For my second interview, I spoke with Juliana Grohman. For the majority of the beginning of her career, Juliana worked as a nurse, I chose to interview her to see how that career path differed from being a PA or a physician, especially since she no longer works in the medical field.
First, I asked her about why she chose nursing over another profession in the medical field. She told me that she always knew she wanted to go into medicine, but a big deciding factor for her was the fact that being a nurse meant that she didn’t have to be in school for as long.
As for her experience as a nurse, she loved it, from the moment she started nursing school. She told me “it just becomes who you are.” She loved how you get paid to help people when they need to the most and that you get to do things that most people can’t do in someone’s life. She described is as kind of being invisible–you just swoop in, do what you need to do, and leave. The best thing about it was the fact that she knows she’s saved the lives of more people than she can count, and none of them know her name.
I found it really interesting how much she loved the almost anonymity of it all–she took pride in the fact that while she knew she was important in each patient’s life, she was nothing more than a blip, if even that, to them in their lives. They won’t remember her or the impact she had on their life.
One of the things I was most curious to ask her about was her experience with leaving the medical field. She told me that when she had her first daughter, she kept working as a nurse. However, later her husband’s job began requiring him to travel more and more, and since nurses don’t tend to have regular schedules, it was becoming too much for their family. So, when she had her second daughter, she decided to leave and become a stay-at-home mother.
Interestingly, after about 5 years, she did try to get back into nursing and become a nurse practitioner, but, according to her, she was “too old.” However, it all worked out for the best because shortly afterwards, she began working as a travel agent for Disney World, which she loves.
Her advice to me was when considering which direction to go in medicine, really think about how much you want to be working. Most types of physicians have really long hours, so if I want to have a family, it could be challenging to balance that time. And especially since an MD requires so many years of school (and tuition money!), the decision to stop working to be a stay-at-home mother might not be an option for me. Of course, though I’d like to have a family, staying at home is not something I really see for myself in the future. While I don’t really see myself going into nursing (especially because I’m not in nursing school), I do think that in choosing between being an MD or a PA, or even in choosing a specialty to work in, balancing work and family life will be an important factor to consider.
