And demand will only go up, no matter how fixed-up or fucked-up the health care system gets.
Is that what your guidance counselor told you? Because it's a total lie. Nursing schools are churning out many more nurses than there are jobs for. My singificant other and most of her family are nurses or nursing school graduates and many of them are either unemployed or have had to look for work in completely unrelated industries. Hospitals are hurting as well in this economy. Nursing staff gets cut like in any other industry, meaning the poor suckers who managed to keep their jobs are now left to deal with double to triple the workload.
This little IT sob story has nothing on the demanding, gruesome, and unappreciated duties nurse is expected to perform on a daily basis. So the manager gave him a stern talking to for being 20 minutes late to a meeting? Try working in a hospital when staffing levels are as low as they are now, with hundreds of patients in unstable emotional states and physical pain taking out their aggressions on the nurses because their needs aren't being attended to as quickly as they desire.
Seriously, staying up late every once in awhile and bringing a server back online is a freaking vacation compared to what you'd have to deal with every single shift as a nurse. To suggest going to nursing school to "escape" anything, most especially a fairly low key IT job, is completely ridiculous. Go to nursing school because you are interested in health, the human body, and caring for others. Do not fool yourself into believing it is an escape in any way, shape, or form.