From Medical to Law Enforcement: Transitioning from Nurse to Police Officer

The Philippine National Police is increasingly employing nurses. This novel type of study’s primary purpose is to discover the life of being a nurse working as uniformed personnel. Five themes emerged from the study: the reasons they chose this job, the challenges, the fears, the realizations, and their opinions on recommending the line of work. The study employed a qualitative research method, using an unstructured interview anchored in Expectation Theory and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory. The purposive and snowball sampling processes were used to identify participants. The study included 10 participants, all employed as police officers in the Province of La Union. Their responses were analyzed through bracketing using Moustakas's phenomenological approach. The results indicate that the participants are content with their current occupation. Although the downside is working away from their families, the possibility of diminishing skills and the stress from their work. However, the benefits of their current job outweigh the challenges, such as in terms of financial and employment stability. The study recommends that further research be conducted in other areas to validate further the experiences of these nurses who transitioned to the police force and to explore additional data from other police officers.