Leaving the Hospital Behind

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Specializes in Onco, palliative care, PCU, HH, hospice.

Well, after quite awhile of being completely stressed out and unhappy with work I think that things are finally about to be different. While I have been in love with nursing since day 1, I've always felt that I hadn't found my "niche". I started my nursing career out on a medical tele unit that also specialized in oncology and end of life care and after a year relocated and started on a med-surg oncology unit while working PRN on PCU. I enjoyed certain aspects of each area, learned as much as could and especially loved and became passionate about working with the terminally ill and their families. However, the stress from both places not to mention working night shift has taken its toll. For several months as you can see from my previous posts I've been looking for something that would be a better fit for me, I considered going into LTC, psych, ambulatory care, etc. until I remembered my original dream in nursing school of working with Hospice.

After a lot of thinking and reflecting and after reaching my breaking point to where I was unable to work for two weeks, I realized it was time for a radical change. As luck would have it I interviewed at a Home Health and Hospice agency and got the position, I've finished my four week notice, and start at my new job next week. I am so excited to undertake this new challenge and while I'm nervous I have a gut feeling that I'm going to love it. Of course no job in nursing is stress free or perfect and there will be days that I will want to pull my hair out but I'm ready to take the challenge. This agency is very LPN friendly, the patient load is reasonable, benefits are decent, the pay is much better than I was making, I'll only be on call one weekend per month, I'll be on a dayshift schedule, and most importantly I'll be living my dream :) Sorry for the long post I just wanted to share my experience and to share my joy that the storm clouds are finally breaking up :-D

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Best of luck to you.:nurse:

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Specializes in Tele/PCU/ICU/Stepdown/HH Case Management.

congratulations! i hope that you find your place there : )

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Specializes in ED, ICU, MS/MT, PCU, CM, House Sup, Frontline mgr.

congrats! :yeah:i love to see nurses post that they are able to move on to what they originally went into nursing to be!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, educator.

I hope it's everything you want it to be. Good luck!

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Specializes in Gerontology, nursing education.

Good for you! :yeah: Thanks for sharing the happy news!

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Specializes in Onco, palliative care, PCU, HH, hospice.

Thanks for the support and good thoughts! I am so excited and am looking forward to Monday, that being said I'm going to also enjoy this coming weekend before it's time to get back to the grindstone! Once again thanks!

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Specializes in Cardiac Telemetry, ED.

Congratulations and good luck!

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