looking for my dream job...

[kalaniana]

I know what I want to do, I'm just not sure where to find it!

My passion is preventative health, increasing quality of life, and public education. I want to educate and impact the greatest number of people that I can.. Whether it be raising awareness on skin cancer, making a brochure on preventing cardiac disease, or educating the public on vaccinations. It doesn't matter what the topic I suppose, whatever a population needs help with, I want to be there!

It seems that public health nursing may involve some of this, but from my understanding it is mostly home visits. Although wonderful, I'd like to go larger scale.. Does this job exist? Who does this? Who do they work for?

[3rdcareerRN]

My limited insight:

- There is definitely a need for health education in the public clinic, but I don't have experience in doing mass presentations there. I got to do 1:1 teaching as a volunteer nurse.

-In my occ health job, I'm responsible for all the bulletin boards and brochures (monthly) we publish. Topics include all the usual ones for preventative health and then a few specific to our 1000-worker population. I really like researching, writing, laying-out, and even sometimes illustrating this material.

- There is an occupation called medical/science writer, and some of them do the same type of research/write/publish on contract to health foundations and special-interest groups.

- You might -- with some journalism or English lit. credentials -- get a job or contract directly at a health organization which wants to publish a patient/family guide on some disease. With a technical background, you might be able to create new health-product information or usage guides. With deep science background you can write materials for pharm firms -- there is a strong cohort of pharm writers I ran across a few years ago.

In my (years of) experience, having some credentials (degree, credits on printed/audiovisual materials, listed as a presenter in a conference, etc.) opens other doors. Start off volunteering, then start asking for an honorarium, then start asking for fees. I don't know anyone making a living as a health educator, but it certainly can be a part-time gig. Good luck!

[MissIt]

Are you already a nurse? What about a career in health education? I do think that the majority of the teaching in nursing is going to be one on one, but lots of nurses go back to school and get master's in nursing education. Other areas that do a lot of teaching would be things like student health at a college or school health.

[wonderbee, BSN, RN]

What you are describing sounds like an outreach coordinator kind of position. There is no actual hands-on nursing involved. It involves a lot of setting up tables at health fairs, some public speaking at community gatherings, staff inservices, putting some miles on your shoes dropping off pamphlets at barber shops, public libraries, etc. Yes, there are such positions.

A lot of public health nursing isn't what you know, it's who you know and getting them to know you. You will want to be invited to gatherings and you will need to get your name out there. That only comes with experience within the department and getting your own identity established doing the more 1:1 stuff.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for.