Career advice please

[maddieebobaddiee, ASN, BSN, RN]

Hi! Hope you're all having a good week, happy early 4th of July 🤗 

 

So I'm in a bit of a pickle.. I've come to realize that bedside nursing is not for me. I tried 3 different units and the pace of the hospital is just too much, combined experience I really pute only have 6-7 months but I really only count 3 of them because I grew so much during that experience but I just wasn't fast enough, plus the patient ratio as a new nurse was a lot (6-7 patients per nurse). I really want a role where I get to know my patients and have a huge impact, I love getting to know people on a deeper level. The most recent experience was on a rehab unit and I loved the patients so much, I really learned a lot and am very proud of myself for trying my best and I did give it my all. I've applied for so many private practice/clinic/remote jobs and I really hope I hear back from one of them, I have a phone call for a dialysis position tomorrow and am excited about that one 🙂 It's 20 minutes from where I live so it would be a perfect commute! 

 

I guess I'm just posting here for advice and to vent

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

If your goal is patient care and getting to know your patients an outpatient dialysis clinic is a good fit. The same patients are in the same chairs usually 3 times a week for several hours each time.  There is a lot of regular scheduled interaction with the same patients and you will get to them and likely their families pretty well. I changed from 25 years in LTC to dialysis and I personally love it.

Clinics and private practice offices you will see recurring patients but not on a daily basis. Plus at least in my area those jobs tend to not pay as well and it is a fairly competitive job market despite the lower pay.

If patient interaction is your goal a remote job would have little to none of depending on the job.  Plus again, these positions tend to be a pretty competitive job market, lots of nurses are looking to get away from bedside nursing so work from home and remote positions are popular choices.

[maddieebobaddiee, ASN, BSN, RN]

aww thank you for your response! yeah I was talking it over with family and friends, my friend brought up that dialysis could be monotonous after a while which I do agree with 🧐🙃 I do like the family med idea better in some ways because I'll get exposed to more and be able to learn a lot :) but I do like the relationship building of dialysis, I'm just really torn haha but I have my dialysis interview + shadow after on Monday afternoon, my family med interview is the week after so hopefully that'll bring me some clarity!

 

I also feel like I had a hard time at the hospital because I would think about the patients I had a lot, even though they're not there anymore I always wondered how the people I helped take care of turned out :) I feel like that lowkey ate me alive being such a social being.. I am thinking about starting therapy soon to help me not become so attached to patients for future jobs. I literally cried to my manager about 2 patients and they were able to help me find closure which was really helpful but I still felt very sad and still do a little bit

[kbrn2002, ADN, RN]

Good luck with the interview!  Staff will probably be  on their best behavior during the job shadow but you'll still get a pretty good feel for clinic culture. By the way, dialysis is not at all monotonous, LOL. It can get crazy there. It was a strange feeling changing specialties though.  I figured I'd been a nurse for 25 years so it would be easy.  I had no idea how much about kidney disease and dialysis I didn't know.  It took about a year before I felt fairly confident about what I was doing. 

Another plus is there are advancement opportunities. After only three years I was offered and accepted the job managing my clinic and had a whole new learning experience for management. Then it took about another year before I felt like I knew what I was doing.