Diabetic Nurse Educator Work life?

[boojeboy]

I'm a new BSN-RN grad who is 34 and came to nursing as a second career after the military. Currently I work on an incredibly busy med-surg/oncology unit that basically functions as a TCU in actual acuity. We get a lot of stroke patients, recent strokes. I typically have 6, sometimes 7 patients and work 12 hour shifts at night.

It isn't for me. In fact some nights I absolutely dread going in and while there I'm a nervous wreck all night. I have issues with anxiety from my service in Iraq and worrying about dementia patients falling, pulling out lines, hurting themselves etc., or I worry about someone coding on me and screwing up in the process, or whatever.

Anyways, I'm very interested in becoming a certified diabetic educator, but I wonder if it is something that I would only be on call for, say in addition to working the floor, or if education would be most, if not all, of what I do?

I really enjoy teaching people, I always have, and it amazes me how little so many diabetics know about the disease, their medications, symptoms and so forth. Plus most nights on med-surg I just fill like a pill-pusher; just keeping patients safe and making sure they get their medications is most of all I can handle most of the time with the acuity and work load.

I noticed that, in my area at least, there aren't that many diabetic educators and many of them are nutritionists/dieticians, though a few are BSNs or MSNs.