MDS - Keeping up skills so you can return to "real nursing"

Specialties MDS

Published

Hi! Sorry about the insult that MDSing is not "real nursing", but sometimes I feel that I am losing all those clinical skills that I worked so hard to aquire during school and will never be able to go back on the floor again.

I became an MDS Coordinator after being an RN for only one month by "accident". The accident was that I gave a medication by the wrong route. I was subsequently asked to leave the ER and return to Med/Surg where I had worked as an LPN for over a year. Not wishing to be back under the Med/Surg manager I knew was a tyrant, I chose to leave the hospital. I was hired by a SNF to do "Medicare forms" not knowing anything about MDS. I don't see myself doing this for the rest of my career.

So, how do I keep up my skills, or better yet, how do I apply for a job as a clinical RN after having had close to no previous clinical experience as an RN? Would a hospital even hire me into a new grad program? Kim

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Specializes in acute care and geriatric.

Kim,

You can only try and find out- it will depend on how desperate they are. Whats the situation in your area?

As you put it "accidents" happen.

Maybe apply as a private duty nurse in the hospital just to keep your feet wet and learn by keeping your eyes and ears open,

You might want to take a refresher course. That will show that you are serious about clinical nursing.

You didn't say how long youve been doing MDS and left clinical..

Good Luck.

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Thanks for the encouragement. I have been the MDS Coordinator for a 109 bed facility for only four months now. I am not sure that this is my cup-o-tea, even though the management has been pleased with my RUG scores and care plans. It feels like I am back in school, doing assessments and care plans that will never be seen or used. :yawn:

The board of nursing said that the complaint on my licence should be removed sometime this month (March), so I will try for another (or at least a second) job when that is cleared up. I live in a small town with one hospital and two nursing homes. I would have to move to Phoenix to be in a new hospital. Thanks again for the reply. Kim

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