Career opportunities as clinical review/database management RN

[Julius Seizure]

I have potentially been offered a position managing a surgical outcomes database for a growing surgical program at my hospital. The core of the job would be reviewing chart records and entering the info into a database that will be used to measure our outcomes to other hospitals outcomes. Zero patient contact. Wonderful hours and flexibility.

But what are the career growth opportunities? The manager spoke of opportunities to get involved with various initiatives and research projects.

But what about opportunities to move up the ladder salary-wise and grow my career? Does anyone have insight into that?

Also, what kind of salary might I expect? Equivalent to a bedside RN (but salary instead of hourly)? I am in a relatively high paying state for bedside nurses, but I am curious if I should expect a raise or not.

[eaRNdit, BSN, RN]

I see this post is old, but I'm wondering if you ever got a good answer or have any advice? I'm in a similar situation right now. I'm early in my career (4years experience) and have my bachelor's. I've completed a quality improvement fellowship at my hospital and the job I'm being offered is very similar to the one you described.

Thanks!!

[Julius Seizure]

Hi @eaRNdit!

As you can see, I never got any responses on this post. I did take the job and have been enjoying it immensely. It is not difficult in the way that floor nursing is, but it is busy in a much more "office-y" way. There are plenty of projects that I would like to get involved with but there are just not enough hours in the week. There are also opportunities to become involved with the workings of some multi-hospital initiatives on a broader/national level...but again, there are only so many hours in a week and your employer might not be willing to have you use your work time for that.

Lots of politics of course, as in any hospital job, but I see them from a different angle now.

As far as advancement opportunity, I think I do have more mobility if I wanted to make lateral job moves, for sure. I could also try to position myself to one day step into my bosses job when she is ready to leave. The job certainly has given me some opportunity to be known individually, rather than as one of many worker-bee floor nurses (that corporate folks rarely bother to interact with.)

I was offered my equivalent nursing salary to start, but negotiated a small increase for having an MSN degree.

If you would like to "talk shop" more specifically, feel free to shoot me a private message. It is such an interesting field and it would be fun to chat ?

[ChitownRN17]

Hi there!

I’ve just started looking more into quality control type jobs and wondering if that is similar to what you do. Based on what you described, it sounds like it could be something that would be similar to what’s available around me, and I’m wondering if there are any specifics you could give me as to what you do on a daily basis. I currently work in a clinic setting and I love the “normal lifestyle hours“ but wondering what kind of hours the job that you work has or if it’s easy to take vacation, especially around the holiday times. Any insight you have would be so helpful as i can decide if it’s something I would love or just not enjoy at all... thanks!