Just got a job interview in ambulatory care! Need advice!

[laurenkabob]

Hello everyone! I'm a (not yet) new grad from the central NY area that is set for graduating with my BSN in December of this year. I started applying for jobs a couple weeks ago on recommendation from my instructors, and I got a call back already! I am interviewing at Bassett hospital in Cooperstown, NY next tuesday. Among the positions they are looking at me for, one of the jobs would be working at a busy community primary care clinic in Oneonta that is affiliated with Bassett. Im excited and nervous about the interview, but I don't know much about ambulatory care. I have read many, many of the threads on here about ambulatory care already, but I'm still confused as to whether this would be a good thing for me to pursue as a new grad. What will I spend my days doing? Whats the pay like for ambulatory care?

I should mention that my primary areas of interest are preventative health, community outreach and disease prevention (my dream job is Public Health). Im also planning to go back to school in a few years for my FNP and would like to work in primary care.

Thanks!!

[AZMOMO2]

Not sure about the rate because that actually depends on the area.But in a Primary care office you will be doing a lot of preventative health, community outreach(mainly your patient base) and disease prevention.Not to mention, lots of script refills and prior authorizations for procedures. There is a lot of coding and front office language that you will learn.Great skills for someone who wants to do Community Health as a future FNP

[pfchang]

"What will I spend my days doing? Whats the pay like for ambulatory care?"

Ask. Get a job description. Ambulatory positions vary greatly from place to place.

[laurenkabob]

Thanks for the help! I had the phone interview this morning and brought up some of these questions. After speaking with the recruiter about my goals and current interests, she scheduled me to interview next week in both the medical and surgical ICUs!

[sallyrnrrt, ADN, RN]

many of the areas you are interested in are what I do in ambulatory care, hours are a dream also

[Ann.E]

I work in a primary care office and I actually do very little referrals or prescription refills. I work with a lot of MAs and they do almost all of those things. What I spend my days doing are scheduling one-on-one patient education sessions on things such as hypertension, weight loss and diabetes. I am the lead clinicl nurse so I am in charge of supervising the MAs. I also do a group class with another RN on healthy living. I am the only nurse in my office though, and with being a new grad, I don't really enjoy that aspect of it. There's an urgent care across the street and for a while I would float back and forth between the two, but then they hired a full time nurse to work there. I was a little disappointed because that is where I got to do caths, wound care and IVs. In the end I decided that working in a hospital setting might be better for me just starting out as a new nurse. But if you know you're already interested in primary care, I would say go for it. For me, I haven't quite figured out what area I am really interested in so I want to explore a little bit. Good luck!