Need advice please!!!!

[HelloKittyRN]

I have only been a nurse for a little over a year, but I already feel like I am getting burnt out. All of the extra hours I have to work, stress, and on top of that being a new nurse! I never realized that floor nursing would be like this. And now....I have been on a medical leave for the past 3 weeks because of an injury to my neck and back. I don't know how much longer I will be able to do floor nursing. I work on a medical floor and we are expected to do just as much for our patients as the aides do. This includes bathing people, feeding them, and lots of lifting. I'm still young (only 24) and I'm scared that another five years of doing this is going to kill me off! What I was wondering is....is there another aspect of nursing that I could go into without losing any pay? I only have my ADN and one year of experience so I don't know how far that will get me. I've looked in to working in a doctor's office and the RN's make a lot less more (if they are even hired at all, mostly it is LPN's and CMA's). Please help! Any suggestions?

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

I was an IV therapist for 6 years. I only saw one patient at a time, sat down for each IV I started (I had my own little folding stool I carried on my IV cart with me). It was so much better on my back. What about an outpatient area of the hospital, such as outpatient surgery or the pre-op area of surgery. If your hospital has any satellite clinics you might check with HR to see if they utilize RNs there and how to transfer. If you are going to be having a problem standing, most of the hospital positions are going to be stressful for you. Telephonic nursing advice is a nice sit down job, but many of them want nurses with several years of experience. You might want to look into psych nursing or the nursing homes. A different way of looking for a job that most nurses don't consider is to go to a headhunter agency looking for an office type position for an RN. There are a number of businesses that look for an RN to put on their staffs to round out their work teams. You will have to have a nicely done up resume and wear a nice business suit, but that is how you find the non-clinical nursing jobs. I don't know if I've told you this before or not, but I went into medical coding and got hired without being certified right away because I was an RN. It is a totally sit down job although the pay is not as high as an RN's. Because I worked for a huge doctor's group, they did have fabulous medical insurance coverage which, as it turned out, I ended up needing.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

Can you cut out the OT? I found when I was a staff nurse, that I did way too much OT and sometimes cutting back made all the difference. Suggestions from Daytonite seem very reasonable too.