I love that you asked this Deserae, this is a huge question I have wondered being a nurse myself. Why stay and why do my fellow nurses stay? TBH I have been in nursing for about 5.5 years now and its tough. I have been wandering away from bedside more and more over the last couple years but I do miss it. I think you feel important as a nurse and like you can bring value to this world. And medicine is just fascinating if you take the short staff, politics, and hard hours out of it. There's really nothing cooler.