My Personality and Most Fitting Employment?

SmilingBluEyes · Apr 15, 2005

I advise you see a university counselor about what it takes to get into a BSN program. Yes, you want a BSN. You mentioned an interest in community health nursing. Most places, you need a BSN or higher to do that. Don't stop til you get that bachelors. Go to the university of your choice, find an education counselor and get a degree plan. Begin knocking out the basics, like English, Math, Speech, Government, Psychology, etc, you get the drift. Find out all the pre-nursing requisite courses and take those, too. When you have all the pre-requisite coursework done, you will be in a good positon to apply and be accepted to nursing school.

I wish you the best of luck. I hope you find your dreams a reality one day.

RN4NICU, LPN, LVN · Apr 15, 2005

Definitely get the BSN. As the previous poster said, most places you cannot do community health without it. For the other things you mentioned, float nurses go from unit to unit. I don't know how many IV teams are still out there these days, so I wouldn't count on that option. You could also specialize in wound and ostomy care, if that interests you. You don't need to work in a hospital for that (although you certainly could). Most larger cities have wound care centers, or you could do wound care as a home health nurse. You may want to check out the specialty forums.

Wound, Ostomy, and Continence https://allnurses.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=66

Public Health Nursing

https://allnurses.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=44

Good luck!

teeituptom, BSN, RN · Apr 15, 2005

With my personality I most fitted to replace Tiger Woods

CritterLover, BSN, RN · Apr 15, 2005

what is it about working in the hospital setting that makes you nervous? i worked as a secretary while i was in school, and sometimes the amount of responsibility that the nurses had scared me.....the judgements they had to make, how accurate their assessments had to be. i think that is fairly normal, maybe not common, but certainly not uncommon. if it is the type of work that is being done, then maybe you wouldn't do well working in the hospital environment, but even then you might want to give it a shot when you get out of school. it is different when you are actually out there, working on the unit.

if you want to do community health nursing, and can get a job in it right out of school, then you probably never need to work in a hospital setting. the worlds are so different. working in different areas always gives you a better perspective, but it shouldn't be mandatory to work in a hospital first before working in public health, and in most areas, i don't think it is.

however, if you do want to specialize in wound/ostomy nursing, you probably do need to work in a hospital first. wound care nurses make alot of independent decisions about patient care, and i think that a year or two of hospital nurisng would be invaluable to you and make you a much better wound care nurse.

bluepony · Apr 15, 2005

thanks so much for helping out with advice! every now and then it feels like i'm just floating and need direction... also, thanks so much for bringing up the bsn... i do have another degree and was thinking an associates would be ok... but really, it would be a shame if not having the bachelors holds me back. thanks for taking the time to help!

fab4fan · Apr 16, 2005

I completely disagree that a new grad can go straight into community health. The home health pts. can be very sick, and you will be on your own, dealing with many different disease processes and expected to know the appropriate assessments and interventions. A new grad is simply not equipped to do that.

My only other advice is to relax a little bit. You haven't even started your clinicals yet; give yourself a breather. As you go through your rotations you may find that you want to go in an entirely different direction. Who knows, you may decide you want to be a NICU nurse!

CritterLover, BSN, RN · Apr 16, 2005

i completely disagree that a new grad can go straight into community health. the home health pts. can be very sick, and you will be on your own, dealing with many different disease processes and expected to know the appropriate assessments and interventions. a new grad is simply not equipped to do that.

i don't think she is talking about home health nursing, though. from her post, she seems to be talking more about community nursing: education, outreach, and the like; very different from direct patient care. while i think that acute care experience would be beneficial, i don't believe it is necessary for working in community health. (i think that varied experiences is almost always a plus. always helps to know how things "work" in the other areas).

as an aside, it is interesting to note that many home health employers are lessening that 1 yr acute-care-experience requirement. huge mistake, i think. i completly agree with you: you need that solid foundation to be out in the home health arena. many people seem to think that home health is "easy." having done it for a few years, i can echo many of you in saying that it is not easy. (not that most of us think that any nursing job is easy). all in all, my home health job was much more difficult than my job working in a surgical icu.

to the original poster: i would call around and talk to places that have the type of job you are interested in (health department, maybe wic programs, whatever you think sounds good) in public health, and ask what their requirements are. my guess would be that a bsn is required but acute care experience is not.

good luck.

fab4fan · Apr 16, 2005

Community nursing would be no different. How effective an educator can you be if you have no practical experience to back it up? I can just imagine someone speaking to diabetic patients, and a patient asking the speaker a question about her past experiences with patients, and the speaker saying, "Uh, I never actually worked with anyone who has diabetes." Book learning is terrific, degrees are terrific, but you also need something else to back it up.

I agree that it is a major mistake to hire green people into home health. I did home health for several years; you're right, it is not easy and in many ways more stressful. No one around to ask for a second opinion. Patients and docs counting on you to know your stuff.

I still think the poster is putting the cart before the horse a wee bit. She hasn't even been in the clinical setting...hardly time to be fretting about where she'll be practicing. There's plenty of time to think about areas of interest.

zenman · Apr 16, 2005

With my personality I most fitted to replace Tiger Woods

What would you pay your caddy?

nursemelani · Jan 28, 2006

i am a pre-nursing student, volunteering in a hospital and a clinic, an getting nervous about what i am seeing. my dream job would be in community health... doing educational outreach, health ed, visitng schools, sex ed, hiv/ hep c, non profit or county (?), the hospital environment in which i volunteer is making me nervous as i could not see myself working the floor long term.
if i were in a hospital environment i could see myself going from unit to unit, maybe iv. i am also interested in skin, abscesses, process of skin healing... something specific that i could focus on and specialize in.
is there hope?! any advice on how to get where i want to be? thanks.

if you want to educate people about stds/birth control, etc, you could try planned parenthood. or, if you don't want to work in a facility that does abortions, there are usually free clinics in big cities that provide birth control, std treatment, etc to tenns and low income people.

the other option would be home health wound care visits. i am interested in that area myself. don't worry. there are lots of non-hospital settings that need nurses !

TheCommuter, BSN, RN · Jan 28, 2006

my dream job would be in community health... doing educational outreach, health ed, visitng schools, sex ed, hiv/ hep c, non profit or county (?),

may i suggest public health nursing?

if i were in a hospital environment i could see myself going from unit to unit, maybe iv.

float nurses go from unit to unit.

i am also interested in skin, abscesses, process of skin healing... something specific that i could focus on and specialize in.

how about becoming a wound care nurse?

is there hope?!

yes, there is hope. don't be hopeless!