Insurance Care Coordinator or Home Health Case Manager

[ande4763]

I have been presented with two different opportunities within the the case managment arena. One is for a local insurance company and the other with at home care agency. I have three years of bed side nursing experience. And a year with directing assisted living facility. I have many years left in my career and need help finding the "best" path. Can anyone give me some tips? Is one better than the other for developing nursing skills and advancing my knowledge and career? Would there be a dead end option? Thank you

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

"Nursing skills" are words often used as shorthand for "manipulative tasks," like, oh, placing IVs, dealing with care technology, and such. There are many, many nursing skills that have more to do with assessment, coordination, communication, and organization, and these will develop in such jobs. I know that it is pretty much impossible to envision nursing jobs like that if all you have ever seen is hospital/facility care from your first clinical rotation in school until the present-- I was exactly like that, and boy, did I have a lot to learn! I was in shock for awhile after I lost my critical care specialist job to a reorganization (we all lost our jobs, they closed the department), and then suddenly realized how much I really, really liked not working shifts, weekends, and unplanned overtime, and how much I enjoyed learning an entirely new specialty using my nursing knowledge outside the hospital.

I suggest you get copies of the job descriptions and use your imagination to look beyond hospital and bedside nursing skills using the information in them. There are a lot of nurses with long, long careers in these areas. Not dead-end jobs at all.