Bariatric Nursing

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Mar 10, 2014

There is a national certification for nurses. Many work in an office setting assisting with patient evaluation for treatment options, ongoing assessment, coordination of testing, medical documentation for insurance coverage, patient & family education and follow up. Usually the nurses working on the bariatric floors are general med-surg nurses as the floor isn't necessarily exclusive to bariatric only even in a facility that has a high volume of bariatric surgery patients.

JustBeachyNurse, LPN · Mar 10, 2014

Here is the link for the certified bariatric nurse information, includes FAQs

http://asmbs.org/cbn-program/

arnie1234 · Mar 13, 2014

Thanks for the info!

BonnieSc · Mar 13, 2014

I am a certified bariatric nurse (even though, personally, it isn't a field that I'm interested in or that I feel good about being involved with). I worked on a floor that recovered 4-6 bariatric surgery patients per week, plus the re-admits. To get the certification--and just for my own knowledge, so I could do better patient teaching--I learned all about the process from beginning to end, though, and I think if you have an interest in bariatric surgery, being the office nurse or coordinator could be a cool job. There's a lot of cheerleading/coaching that goes into it, and it's a very holistic discipline--nutrition, exercise, social work, psychology, surgery, medicine all play big roles in the patients' success. The office nurse has a role in coordinating all of this for every patient, starting with assessments to see whether the patient is a candidate to begin with. Some people who aren't candidates stay as patients until they can make some health/lifestyle/insurance changes that do make them qualified for the surgery, and the nurse is involved with that as well. You really form a relationship with these people because the pre-op/operative/post-op stages are all quite in-depth, and you get to see lives change (in certain ways) quite quickly. The surgeons I worked with said that was what hooked them on bariatrics, the concrete evidence that they were helping people change their lives.

I don't want to go into my statement above about not wanting to be involved with bariatric surgery, but I do think you have to have a strong philosophical commitment to the field.