Help me go over this plan, please? LOOONG

[Hoosiernurse, ADN, RN]

Hello, I have a question...I'm 42 and have been in nursing since 2008. I have cardiopulmonary stepdown experience and telemetry.

After two stressful inner city hospital jobs with long commutes, I found out about a nursing home job in my own hometown! Pay was going to end up being the same as what I made in the city hospital, weekend option. Did it get any easier than that? WOW! And for about a year, it was pretty good...but things got steadily worse and worse. I watched in horror at how people were used as commodities, care was poor, communication between the office and the workers was just non-existent. Finally, at the end, I was ready to explode. I had asked to be placed on a particular wing where I had a real rapport with the patients. I had PATIENTLY asked for 8 months, and got lots of lip service. I watched as brand new nurses that came in that I trained got to pick and choose the wings they worked on, but I was still being placed on whatever the worst and most demanding wing was because I never walked into the office saying I'd quit unless I got what I wanted the way the other nurses and CNAs did.

In the end I finally broke. One night they changed the schedule so that I would, once again, end up with the worst wing. So rather than do the smart thing, I walked out without notice after my shift. I called in the next day, and then later I told them I would not be back.I know that was not the way to do things, but I simply didn't think I could stand being there anymore, and certainly not when they were going to keep placing me on that wing with inadequate staffing and people falling all over the place, plus the harassment from the day shift (and yes, the office knew about that, too, they don't care). So I walked. I figured I would never go back to nursing EVER again, I would cut meat in a grocery store before I went back. That's how sick I was of my three years in nursing. The only moment I actually liked nursing was when I did PRN work in wound care in the city.

What I was thinking was, I will go ahead and get my BSN online, then I will get certified in wound care. I've already applied to a local hospital for a part time wound care position (omitting my time at the nursing home, because I walked out. I just told them I have been doing private duty, which is true...I was doing that along with my nursing home position). I don't know if I will get the wound care job, but either way I'll get my BSN and certification.

Does anyone know if I can get my certification in wound care without being employed in nursing someplace? I have plans in a few years for myself and my family to move to Massachusetts and I'd like to be able to become a wound care nurse in a clinic, or possibly hospital. As long as I can stay away from bedside nursing EVER again, I can consider going back into nursing. Otherwise, I'd better just start looking for meat cutting jobs in grocery stores.

Also, as a side question, would YOU put the nursing home experience on your resume, even though you walked out without a notice? I have nurses who I worked with there who would vouch for my character and the good work I did. The situation was unsafe for my license, and I had spoken to the DON and the manager about it. They did nothing, as they always did about any issue that came up.

I bolded the most important stuff in case someone would like to skim (:^) Long story.

Thanks,

Cara