Career Uncertainty / Has anyone gone back to the hospital after a "9-5" job?

[nurseinthecity04]

Hi everyone. I'm having a bit of a quarter life crisis. Lately, I've been all over the place when thinking about what I want to do with my life.

A brief background on my nursing career: I worked briefly in the hospital as my first nursing job. I started on a geriatric med-surg unit. While I truly enjoyed caring for the patients...I was stressed out all the time. I jumped ship at a little less than the one year mark at that job. From there, I worked for a couple years in the primary care setting at a family practice. During that time, I saw a brand new NP that was hired begin her career. Watching her grow planted a seed in the back of my mind that I might like to be an FNP one day. However, I was not certain that was what I wanted to do with my life so I kept working as a nurse. While at the family practice, I started working on a Masters in Public Health degree part-time because I felt a bit stuck and felt the need to work towards something. It turns out, I LOVE public health just as much as I love caring for patients. I love the concept that public health can help so many people (as compared to one patient) all at once. I ended up getting a job as a public health nurse for a local city.

The health department clinic I work in is for an AWESOME cause and I am proud to call myself a nurse for the clinic. However, the actual job can be very slow. The patient load fluctuates a lot. There are many days where I sit at my desk bored, counting the minutes to leave. I have been at this job for close to a year, and I am debating where to go from here. I worry that I will do something I regret out of the fact that I am bored at this current job. (Yes, I know some people who have stressful jobs would love a job like this. The grass is always greener.)

I am still working on my MPH degree, part-time, while working my full time job. At times, I have debated a non-nursing job in public health. However, it really scares me to think about not being a nurse. I feel like I would miss directly caring for patients so much. I don't think I would feel fullfilled if I were not helping people. I still have this seed planted in the back of my mind that I may like to be a nurse practitioner. I also have a love for patient education and public health.

Long story short, I am thinking I would like to combine being an NP and public health...however, I am not financially in a place where I want to get into more debt in NP school right now. So now I need to figure out what I want to do to continue gaining RN experience while working on my financial state. I have been thinking about going back to a floor nurse job at the hospital to gain some more hospital experience...and also make more income so that I can get to a better financial place for potentially going to NP school.

I am no longer that 22 year old nurse starting out on the geriatric med-surg floor. I had some tough stuff going on in my life at that age. I constantly thought about and stressed about that job when I left work. Since then, I have gotten better at separating work from my personal life. I have gotten better at talking to patients. I have learned how to prioritize things. I have learned how to collaborate with physicians. I have learned and grown a lot. However, I am not sure if this is due to personal growth...or the fact that I have not been in the hospital setting....or a combination of those.

So I am wondering - has anyone ever gone back to the hospital after having worked an typical "9-5" (although I work slightly different hours) clinic job? How did it go? Was the experience different on a different floor?

[RatherBHiking, BSN, RN]

You sound so undecided that I would not make any major changes at this time. I would finish my master’s degree first. However, that’s not the advice you asked for so I’m going to answer that. Yes I did. I left a school health job to return to med-surg for a year a few years ago. We needed the money and I wanted to increase my skills and see if I felt more fulfilled elsewhere. It was at a different hospital than my first nursing job. My first few weeks I thought what in the world have I done? Lol! However, I jumped in and learned fast and learned so much and it felt great using my skills again. I also loved not working every day of the week. I left after a year to go back to school health because I still had kids at home and was offered a better school nurse position which worked out well at the time. However, here I am looking to make that jump back into the hospital because my kids are all older and I’m very bored and unchallenged at work most days. However this time I’m not as scared because I do not regret going back at all the last time. If you go back you can possibly get tuition assistance. The work is a lot more physically demanding though. Good luck deciding!