You'd be surprised on that last part m9. I did some looking at the salaries. I'm bound to start higher than a female otherwise would.

how long does it take to become a male nurse im tryna make some scrilla

They do make more actually. Unless it's drastically changed in the past year.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2015/03/124266/male-registered-nurses-make-thousands-more-salary-female-counterparts

https://news.nurse.com/2015/08/10/nurses-speak-out-about-gender-pay-gap/

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/02/25/male-nurses-make-more-money/

1 year LPN/LVN
2 years RN (Associates Degree)
4 years BSN-RN (Bachelor's Degree)

This post was edited by Lancet_Jade on Aug 13 2016 05:15pm

Interesting. But those just show the annual salaries not the hourly which is more important since overtime pay can skew the figures a lot in nursing.

This post was edited by dark-soul on Aug 13 2016 06:06pm

I can only speak from my perspective, I am a 4th year medical student and will be angling for internal medicine to hopefully a cardiology fellowship after residency.

If I had to do it all over again I have to admit I wouldn't, Med school is miserable as hell, licensing exams are never ending, debt is insane, and the amount of schooling required before you see a real paycheck is ridiculous (hint residency and fellowship don't pay much), Here is what you have to look forward to if you go for cardiology:

Bachelors degree - 4 years
Medical school - 4 years
Residency - 3 years (through internal medicine)
Cardiology fellowship - 3 years + 1 year if you want invasive

Total: 14 years excluding a masters degree I if you don't get in right away, I had to get one and it was a further drain of cash and time.

Now on to competitiveness, you need to study until your eyes bleed and do well on standardized tests, as no admissions committee will look twice for bad grades or licensing exams.

You will need to do good on the MCAT, job shadow doctors, do volunteer work, get a high undergrad gpa and then pass an often challenging Med school interview

Now once your in med school you'll have to pass your classes and take USMLE step1, 2ck, 2cs, 3 + licensing exams to become board certified, each exam is about 9 hours and super stressful, if you do bad on any of these bad boys your odds of getting a residency go down the drain and you will be in serious trouble, like you might graduate med school with you MD degree but you won't have a job since you didn't get a residency, there are not enough residencies for every Med school graduate, it happens. To make matters worse cardio is ultra competitive so you may not match after your residency.

Basically what I am saying is you need to really commit, the cost is monumental so once you have accrued your first 50k of debt its really too late to turn back.

Btw did I mention that during residency you work crazy hours? Eh you get the idea.

This post was edited by dogboston on Aug 14 2016 11:10pm

To add to the above post about debt, your plan of attending the community college and then attaining your bsn afterwards is the way to go imo. I know nurses who are 120k in debt and make 40/hr. They went to out of state/private universities which are expensive. There is assistance to pay off federal student loans for nurses though so you may only need to end up paying back the private loans. To help pay back the private loans you can get tuition reimbursement from hospitals, although the amount you get might not be that much.

The advantages to the university path is that it can be faster. A lot of community colleges have a wait list for their nursing programs and can be more competitive to get accepted than a local university.

This post was edited by dark-soul on Aug 15 2016 07:18am

Yes I believe it's the route I want to go as I'll be able to save 9,000/semester in loans especially if I get the full ride in community college. Unfortunately I'll be set back a year as I didn't apply for the nursing program for the fall but certainly I'll be able to get some basic courses out of the way, psychology, microbiology, etc.

Unfortunately no tattoos the nursing route

This post was edited by tommyd323 on Aug 15 2016 01:09pm

Not true at all! My hospital code says that tattoos are permitted as long as they aren't deemed offensive.

I have a few visible tattoos and I never hear anything about it.

You can probably have tattoos as long as they aren't visible while in uniform. Check your schools nursing programs handbook. And yeah getting those classes out of the way now would make it easier later on since youll be able to focus on your nursing courses which will be much more difficult than any of the pre reqs.

This post was edited by dark-soul on Aug 15 2016 01:56pm