Hi all,

I see there have been various posts on here from people considering quitting their PhDs but please bear with me! I started my PhD in Jan 2008 at a prestigious UK university. I was really excited about being offered the place and doing a PhD as this was something I'd wanted to do for a long time. However, from the start the excitement and enthusiasm I was expecting to feel was lacking. At the time I put this down to being tired from commuting. After moving closer to uni I felt more enthusiastic for a couple of weeks. During the last couple of months I've lost all interest in my PhD, in research generally and in pursuing a career in research. I've never really had a 'plan B' before but have recently begun to get really interested in training to be a nurse and have been to a couple of open days. I'm based at a hospital two days a week, really enjoy the environment and patient contact and feel that this could be a really rewarding career for me.My friends and family have offered mixed advice, I think because I'm currently taking anti-depressants after the breakdown of a long term relationship. I have told my first supervisor that I'm experiencing problems with motivation and he has been supportive and suggested some ways of making my PhD more interested but I really feel that my heart is not in it.

Basically, I'm thinking of seeing whether I can convert back to an MPhil student (where I study you have to submit the upgrade proposal at 9 months) and then apply to nursing courses to start Sept 2009. I'm not sure whether my supervisors would agree to this since I was taken on to do a PhD and they're funding me from their research accounts. I obviously want to stay on good terms with them in any case as I would need a reference should I apply to nursing courses.

Any advice would be much appreciated!! :-)

Hi Actimel
I think there was another similar post by a nurse a while ago. You might like to search threads with 'nurse' to see if you can find support.
Good luck.
One thing to add - most phd students feel a sense of confusion and despondency after initial excitement. There are peaks and troughs throughout. I submitted my thesis last week, but there were many times I felt like giving up, even near the end. I took eight months off at one point to re-assess. That might be an option for you...

Hi Actimel01,

I considered training to be a nurse after my BSc as I loved patient contact and I actually know a lot of people who went down that path. Just one thing to think about. I do my PhD in a Medical School (although I'm not a medic) and we have a number of registered PhD students who are Nurses. If you were to finish the PhD then do training you would be in a position to be promoted fairly quickly to a Research Nurse I would imagine. Having said that, 3 years is a long time to do something if you're really not enjoying it.

Have you thought about adapting your PhD to make it more about patient contact? I'm not sure what area you are in but how about delivering an intervention with patients? Including qualitative interviews and focus groups with patients?

Lastly, talk to as many people as possible about it! Talk to the nurses, talk to pre-registration/student nurses, newly qualified nurses, nurses who have been there 20/30 years. Talk to staff nurses, nurse practitioners, research nurses etc. Information is knowledge right? Also, make sure you talk to everyone who matters to you about it.

Good luck!

A

As a bit of pre-emptive warning, I worked in a hospital for five years and the nurses were perpetually downtrodden and their opinions ridden over rough-shod. Be very sure about making such a transfer: nursing really is, to use the old cliche, a "way of life". Patient contact is one aspect, there's also the mountains of paperwork, long hours and shift rotation not to mention self important (usually junior) medics and admin staff.
Not to put you off, but be really sure before you abandon all your hard work.

At risk of sounding like a party pooper I am a nurse - or I was. I trained back in the late 80s early 90s (I started in 1989) and back then nursing was great - damned hard work, incredibly so- emotionally killing - holding a dying person, (worse still a child) is something that sears itself into your brain and stays with you life - it can be exciting at times, there are some great moments, but there are far far more heartbreaks. I left when it ceased to be so much a caring profession and turned into a paperwork based one like the secretarial work I had left. The time with patients was cut, budgets were cut. Whilst in the early days I could sit on the bed of a person who was scared or upset or just needed a shoulder to cry on and give them the time they needed, by the end I couldn't do that - not enough staff, too much paperwork. I went into nursing to care for people - sounds a cliche I know, a bit like Miss World lol, but its true, but I found that nursing isn't like that anymore really. When I went back after my children were born and worked as an auxilliary nurse part time with the elderly I regained that - but as a trained nurse - nope, not really. That is one reason I decided to study again and change professions totally - I just didn't want to return to something that was nothing like the vocation I chose.
Sorry to sound on such a downer about it - just understand that nursing is something you do because you can think of nothing else. Its not all patient contact - its patient tolerance - they ring bells, you have a mountain of paperwork to do. Its so so sad and I wish to goodness that they would change things so that nurses were back out on the ward with the people they went into the profession to care for rather than behind a desk struggling to meet the latest deadlines.

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who replied for their kind advice. After a lot more thinking and some honest discussion with my supervisors, as well as talking to friends, family, and a couple of nurses, I have decided to write up for an MPhil and then starting a nurse course. A bit scary now that the decision has been made final and reality is setting in, but I think this is the right thing for me to do.

Good luck to everyone else with your PhD's

Thanks again!

Making such decisions is never easy and I wish you all the best.

heya, having quit my masters to pursue a nursing qualification i can offer the advice not to do it! I have now changed back havig done nursing for one year and found it hugely frustrating. The nursing courses vary hugely so be aware of your universities strengths having said that- my mistake having been to go to a uni which had little academic focus. I felt patronised and hugely impotent with regards to using my prior knowledge from my first degree and was worn down so much i gave up. The highs being an excellent mentor who could appreciate diversity in nurses and who was open to listen and learn from me, the low.... being told how to talk to people for 6 straight weeks in 4 lectures a day on the topic. I wish you luck though, it's worthwhile once you qualify but i couldn't stick it. ANothe rchoice would be the new post grad diploma in physician assistant studies... london and birmingham offer it!