clinical RN wishing to change to research

Do you live near a university or affiliated hospital?

Hmmm...think a response was lost in the transition, but, in any event:

Your local yellow pages should have a listing or two, under "research". these will usually be a CRO-style office, where coordinators, regulatory, etc., are contracted with local physcians to perform studies. If there is a teaching hospital near, that would probably be more stable, though you might be "stuck" in one specialty, for awhile.

Also, if you go to http://www.socra.org/ and click on "chapters", on the left tool bar, you can find the closest one in your state. A good source for making connections, and they may be active in recruiting (varies by location & interests of the members & leadership).

I applied for my job even though it was BSN preferred. The only reason I got it was that I sold them mostly on my non-nursing skills that I could bring. I looked at some generic job descriptions to figure out what skills would be desired.....

^^This. Hate to say it, but unless you're being hired to manage a study, or cull databases and write preliminary protocols, the BSN requirement is total BS.

If you can interact effectively with people (sell, motivate, assess) and if you have or can readily learn phlebotomy, running an EKG trace, and possibly an infusion pump, pretty much anyone can do the job.

I am in academic research vs. clinical trials so I do write preliminary protocols and all that goes with the IRB submission... our studies are small (relatively) so I do everything other than write the science behind the hypothesis and the biostats that are done by a PhD.