How to transition from Telemetry to Ambulatory Care Nursing?

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i work nights on tele, and would like to switch to days in an ambulatory setting such as day surgery, gi, pre-op, pre-admit...they all seem to either want experience in that setting, or icu/ccu/cvor experience. i have floated multiple times to ccu/pcu. i'm in the dfw area. does anyone know of a place that would hire me, or does anyone have tips on how to get my foot in the door? i have talked to a recruiter at the hospital where i currently work, and he told me the same thing.

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I was a tele nurse for clothes to 8 yrs before I was completely burnt out and I transferred to an outpatient surgery center owned by my hospital system. At the time they were using quite a bit of agency nurses and I was trained to do both pre-op and phase 1 recovery.

I did go back to floor/cardiac nursing for awhile, but yrs later I'm in a different state still working in a hospital's Same Day Surgery dept.

If you can't get a FT job right away at least see if you can find a PRN position or see if you can shadow someone in the ambulatory depts in your hospital that you're interested in.

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nursemikki,

thanks so much for your response. i'll start applying for prn positions. for some reason i was avoiding applying for those, because i thought that if they hired a nurse for prn, then they would expect that the person already have experience in the area. it's definitely worth trying though. thanks again.

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