I'd go for dental hygiene since you can reach much more people on that business, sure, there's babies everyday, but everybody needs to take care of their teeth, also it sounds more interesting and you need more coordination and knowledge about procedures.

 

Do Dental..

If you have SA, you can work with instruments (cleaning, sterilizing, etc.) or a dental lab for prosthesis orders.

I left the medical field a few years ago. Mothers - pregnant or otherwise are a HUGE problem. You have to drop everything the moment they have a problem. That means you'll be up all night, plus having to work with scheduled patients all day. Females hormones are raging, pre-post birth. And that sense of entitlement and selfishness we're seeing in the medical field today is a bit much.

I finally decided i had enough when i saw a old lady get knocked down in line. We were finishing up for the day, and ready to close the clinic, and the older woman was the last one to make an appt. before we had to close. She was ready to give her information when this chick - knowing our business hours, ran past security, and shoved that woman out of the way so she could make the last appt. slot.

Why? The young lady was 17 weeks pregnant, and wanted to have her OB survey - replete with baby pics, so she could see if she was going to have a boy or a girl.

Nothing made my stomach turn worse than hearing that old woman hit the ground.

 

I considered a dental career at one point. But I was worried about my neck and my tension migraines. Turns out that a lot of people in the dental field retire early because of neck issues.

I plan to hopefully go into the nursing field, but even that can cause back and neck issues over the years. Depending on what you do.

 

Nursing seems really rough for social anxiety. Most of the nurses I've worked with seem to be very good at talking to different kinds of people. They all seem to have pretty thick skin too.

 

Former nursing student chiming in.

Is there one you think you would enjoy the most? Does one interest you more over the other?

I feel like the best nurses who I encountered (teachers, classmates, and nurses from my clinical rotations) loved nursing to such an extent that they couldn't imagine working any other job. It is a tough job. High stress environment, hard to find work right out of school, understaffed hospitals, long hours. Nursing honestly isn't for everyone and many of my old classmates are frustrated with the work and are only motivated by paycheck/benefits.

Can you see yourself successfully performing either of those jobs with your degree of SA?

I'd like to mention that I learned the hard way that nursing wasn't for me. My grades were ok but my performance on the floor during my clinical rotations was a disaster due to SA. Talking to others, speaking up and advocating for my patient, and asking invasive questions was pretty rough for me. I also had trouble politely interacting with unruly patients or balancing manners with efficiency/timeliness. I was often behind with my nursing duties. When told to speed up, the stress/anxiety would hit hard and I'd focus on my to-do list so people would stop yelling at me. But that also meant that I completely disregarded manners and that further aggravated the nurses.

Even if I performed my tasks correctly, politely, and on time, patients would still request to have a different nursing student because I was just awkward/quiet/weird. Other nurses even noted that in my evaluations and it was pretty disheartening to hear all of that.

It's not impossible to be an awesome nurse with SA but I think it is a challenge. If that's really what you want to do with your life, then by all means go study hard and kick butt in your clinicals.

I haven't explored dental hygiene as a profession but I think i would prefer it over nursing. I only have brief conversations with my dental hygienist and we hardly talk when she is working on my teeth. I just let her focus on her job and follow instructions she occasionally provides. Then at the end, she points out what I can do maintain/improve my dental health. Sounds like a cool job to me.

Anyway, I may have went on a rant but I hope that some of this was useful. Good luck!

 

One thing about dental hygiene is you have to be sure you're okay with working with people's mouths/teeth. People's mouths are disgusting and it's a small space you're working with. I think both dental hygiene and nursing are great careers. You might be able to excel in both too. Dental hygiene might be more SA friendly, but you can still be a good nurse as well. Only you can gauge what career you can handle.

I do have one question for you. Dental hygienist usually require an associates degree and to be a nurse you would have to do the pre-reqs and get accepted to a nursing program. Would it be possible to do both? You can do an associates in dental hygiene and and I would imagine the prerequisites for nursing school would fall in line with the dental hygiene program. Then you can either work as a dental hygienist for a while or head straight to nursing school and work as a dental hygienist part-time. That would look good on your resume and put you ahead of your classmates in nursing school, since you have a job in the healthcare field already versus being a cashier at a retail company. Plus, you have a steady stream of cash while you're studying. The nursing field is really broad too as you can work in different types of settings, which can be helpful when you're looking for a job or maybe you'll find a specific field that you really like.