“Why Not Nursing?” — A Question That Still Matters

There’s a question I used to hear in medical school interviews. One that doesn’t get asked much anymore — probably because someone in a faculty somewhere decided it was outdated, a bit classist, maybe even borderline offensive.

“If you just want to help people, why didn’t you go into nursing?”

It sounds snide — like a trap. And it is. That’s the point. It puts a scalpel under the skin of all those “I just want to care for people” answers and says, prove it.

It asks you to be honest.

And most of us weren’t.

I know I wasn’t.

The Truth

I never even considered nursing.

Not because I looked down on it. But because, growing up, it was never presented as an option.

I went to a private school. That sort of place where “helping people” meant you applied to medical school, not nursing.

Careers advice was a funnel, not a net. Bright students went into medicine, law, maybe finance if you had a head for numbers. Nursing was never mentioned. Not once.

And that silence is deafening in hindsight.

There was always this quiet hierarchy: being a doctor was impressive. Nursing—at best—was noble. At worst, an afterthought. The plan B.

That hierarchy still bleeds through today: nursing remains undervalued and underpaid, a profession overwhelmingly female and routinely dismissed in status despite being skill- and accountability-heavy.

I Married a Nurse. It Didn’t Make Me One.

For context, I’m married to a nurse. That doesn’t make me insightful — just observationally adjacent.

What I’ve learned over the years is this: I don’t think I could do it.

And I don’t mean “I don’t want to.” I mean, I don’t think I could.

The emotional labour, the practical grit, the sheer mental elasticity it takes to be a good nurse — it’s overwhelming. It’s also largely invisible to most of us in medicine.

Doctors diagnose problems. Nurses carry people. That day-in-day-out emotional work — surface-acting, deep-acting, anticipatory grief — correlates strongly with burnout and moral distress.

What Nurses Know That We Don’t

Nurses learn patients. Doctors learn problems.

That’s the fundamental split. Doctors get trained to diagnose, to intervene, to move on. Nurses get trained to stay.

Because nurses stay, they absorb: the mess, the grief, the bureaucracy, the late-night anxiety, the paperwork. They hold space other clinicians can’t or won’t.

And most of them? They do it with half the resources and twice the emotional fallout — and carry it with barely a whisper of thanks.

The Structural Truth

Medicine has always had a class and gender problem. Nursing has been its shadow.

The profession is heavily feminised, systemically undervalued, and routinely seen as subordinate to more “technical” roles.

Even leadership routes remain blocked: despite representing over 90% of the nursing workforce, women fill far fewer senior clinical posts, and those from ethnic minority or working-class backgrounds face entrenched barriers to progression.

Could I Be a Nurse?

No.

Not because I’m above it. Because I’m not built for it.

I don’t have the stamina to endure emotional complexity without endpoint, or the emotional stability to stay when there’s no discharge, no finish.

Nurses carry everything: vomit, bureaucracy, tears, the second-by-second care that medicine sidelines. They’re the system’s backbone — and they still smile.

So Why Medicine?

Because I was guided there.

Because I had the grades.

Because I liked the prestige.

And if I’m honest? Because no one offered me another path — one just as rigorous, just as essential.

Final Thought

That question — “Why not nursing?” — still matters.

It forces admission of bias: in schools, in status, in system design. If we’re serious about healthcare, we need to stop treating nursing as “support” and start seeing it as core.

Nurses run the wards. They ground the teams. They absorb the weight. And they do it with fewer breaks, less pay, and more risk.

If you think that’s less-than? You haven’t been paying attention.

Stay Sisterly

—DW