Just quick background - nursing is a 2nd career for me. I have my BS in Business Management but decided to go back to school for nursing after watching a couple family members die from cancer.
I am a new nurse with less than one year of experience (been on my own for 3 months) on a telemetry unit in a hospital. I have learned very quickly that bedside nursing is not for me and now I'm crying over the fact I wasted 2 years of my life going back to school for nursing (I literally cry in tears about the fact how much I dislike bedside nursing and that I really did waste 2 years going back to school for nursing). The reason why I do not like the bedside nursing is because of the high stress that is involved of taking care of very sick patients.
Before I gave up on the whole nursing degree I looked into case management because it looks like an area where I can put both degrees to good use. However, some places require a BSN and 2 years bedside nursing experience .... I can tell right now I do not think I'll be lasting 2 years at the bedside if I feel awful about it now and I don't know if I want to go for my BSN for MBA at this point if I do go back to school. So now I feel like I'm back to where I feel like dropping the whole nursing license, and realize I made one big life mistake and head back to my comfort zone in the business world. And I'm sure someone will ask "How did you not realize this in nursing school?" All the times I shadowed a nurse during clinicals everything seemed so streamlined but it has been total opposite for me. Before I drop nursing all together I was hoping you could offer advice about other type of Nursing Jobs I could look into with (hopefully) 6 months of bedside nursing experience.
I just want to feel comfortable again in a career and just wish I could stop crying because I do that a lot when I think about what a huge mistake I've made. Thank you so much for all your time.
Dear Dislikes Nursing,
I would not recommend making a career change until you have a year under your belt. You will have a hard time finding something else before then. At one year, your options increase considerably. Hopefully, you can tolerate sticking it out for a few more months knowing there's an end in sight and that your marketability is increasing by the minute.
Spend this time talking to other nurses and exploring other options within nursing that don't involve the high intensity/stress you describe. There are many, many non-bedside options out there, both inside and outside of the hospital. You already mentioned Case Management, good choice.
There's also Utilization Review that might be a good fit for someone with your business knowledge. Informatics is a good area for nurses who enjoy computers. There's Employee Health, Pre-Admission Screening, Risk Management, Quality, Infection Prevention, and much more. There's telephonic case management for working remotely, and nurse educator roles for vendors such as Hill Rom, BARD, etc. As a benefit, you get to travel.
Outpatient oncology clinics allow you to have patient contact but without the inpatient stress. They can be very busy, but the environment is more controlled.
I could keep going on and on, but you get the idea. There really is something for everyone. Explore different career paths here on allnurses at Nursing Specialties
You have a Bachelor's degree in Business, which is great, although a Bachelor's in Nursing is preferred and sometimes required.
As far as being certain you made a huge mistake, why not suspend that judgement until you've been out a year. You may see things differently at that point. At least consider the possibility that it's possible :)
There's a time to move past the regret, stop beating yourself up, and move forward. You will feel better when you have a plan and you're back in control making your plan happen. For starters, you did not waste 2 years. Frame it as 2 years of gaining transferable and marketable skills..
