Case management may not be for me?

[Katstorm340]

I’m a fairly new, inexperienced nurse with only 1 year of experience. Though I also took a year away from nursing for a year too to focus on my mental health and get away from the bedside. Now, I’m ready to get back into nursing but I would prefer a day shift position that is not at the bedside. So far, I received 3 offers for the pediatric OR, school-nursing, and a case management position. All my interviews seem to like me because I’m a good talker, and I try really hard to sell myself. I turned down the school nurse position to focus on my other two offers.

I think I want to be an OR nurse but I’m not sure how the on-call requirements would affect my work-life balance. That is most important to me. 
 

For my case management position they said that I will take care of 1300 patients. My team would consist of a provider, medical assistant, and a administrative support. My duties would be a lot of administrative tasks and coordinating the care of patients with my team. The position is 8am - 5pm mon-fri with 1 hour lunch break. I would also have 3.5 weeks of vacation for year of service then it will continue to increase up to 6.5 weeks. The only thing that really is doubting whether I like this or not, is that it seems like it would be very stressful to care for that many patients. And they ask whether I would be comfortable with straight catheterizing patients and do some wound care when needed like once or twice a month. Though this seems more like bedside work which I was not thrilled to know. 
 

So does the duties of this CM position raise any red flags to anyone? I’m not sure if I should actually accept the offer or not.

 

[asil17]

Hello! I was an OR nurse for 10 years before I became FNP. Now I work in oncology breast cancer practice. While in the OR there was a lot of call and weekend work. It is a great place to work, lots of cameraderie, but can be stressful. There is also quite a bit of training involved. Where I work they have an OR nurse program to train RNS who have an interest, I enjoyed OR very much but decided to go bck to school, which was a good decision. Good luck! 

[dennis8, ADN, BSN, CNA, RN]

Hi Katstorm340. I’ve been doing hospital case management for about 2 years now and it is purely non-bedside. Depending on where you work, your duties can involve having to utilize your nursing skills. Some positions that say “case manager” may actually involve physically assessing patients, performing wound care, IV insertion, etc. I know most case manager titles in home health actually involve driving  to patients homes and doing assessments and nursing interventions. Did you apply at a clinic or IPA? Because it sounds like it.  I know your post was posted over a month ago, but maybe you can try asking if you have the option of not having to perform nursing interventions. Sounds like they also need your help to fill in staffing gaps.