Career advice please

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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

Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

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.

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

Specializes in Geriatrics, Dialysis.

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.  

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