career dilemma

being named in a lawsuit doesn't necessarily mean that you did something wrong. however, i can see where it really was a blow to you. have you considered going back to get your bsn? it did wonders for me. it also put me right up into supervision and management which turned into a whole new world of new nursing experiences. i loved supervision more than management because i could still be in the clinical area but not confined to one particular unit. i could help other nurses out and i got to see the big picture of how the whole hospital was operating which was a lot different view than just from my one unit of the hospital.

for medical reasons i can no longer work in the clinical area. i've been studying health information management (formerly medical records). it will net me a desk job that as a hrit (with an aa) or hria (if i get a ba in it) will pay comparable or more than an rn. my rn background is proving to be invaluable for me. for instance, when jcaho came up in our studies, i went sailing through it in my classes as i knew very well what a survey was all about while the other students really knew nothing about it at all and were struggling with trying to understand the accreditation process. i'm learning what the flip side (office side) of the importance of the charts are and i am finding it so amazingly fascinating. it's answering years of questions i've had about medicare, medicaid and social security and how they are driving our health care system. this semester i'm taking classes in how hospitals are organized and licensed. i'm leaving out one of the big components of this career and that is computers. computers have changed everything in the world, including nursing, medicine and hospitals. i didn't understand the importance of these new nanda driven nursing diagnosis care plans that are being taught to nursing students until i started studying health information management. it all ties in to computerized coding of health care delivery. best thing. it's a sit down job and that's what i need right now, but i'll still have my hand in patient things.

i had a friend who worked for an insurance company auditing charts, a law firm auditing charts for appropriateness of nursing care, and for a consulting company that audited charts for correctness of billing. she found these jobs through head hunter agencies. it took preparing resumes, going to not one, but usually several interviews over several months, and just being patient and waiting for call backs. for several jobs she had a company car. she also had a bsn which you may need to get these jobs. in general, she found the jobs very boring because of the mounds of paperwork required and never ended up staying at them very long. she also worked for a very large bed manufacturer as a nurse consultant and educator. when they installed new beds in a facility, she went along to conduct inservices with the staff on how the beds worked. she found that job boring as well. she transferred to one of their divisions that placed specialty beds with nursing homes and hospices and ended up hating it because of all the paperwork that had to be done and having to cool her heels in doctors offices getting signed orders for the beds in order to get medicare and medicaid payment. when you are used to working with patients in busy hospitals, these desk-type jobs don't have the adrenaline rush you are used to.