Nurses: Do any Clinical Nurse Specialists (CNS) work alongside you?

[Samian Q]

A bit curious, since a lot of nursing schools offer Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS) programs, yet I wonder where they end up working.

Do you personally know any CNSs in your workplace?

[Mulan]

They work as educators.

[elkpark]

I am a (child) psych CNS -- I've never worked as a unit educator (and have no interest in doing so). I've worked as an individual, group, and family psychotherapist in inpatient psychiatric programs, and have also served as a formal and informal mentor and consultant to the nursing staff. I've also done psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing in a large, urban teaching hospital, where the PCLN team went everywhere in the medical center EXCEPT the psychiatric units. We spent a lot of our time working in the ED and ICU (the trauma team used us a lot).

I've also worked as an outpatient psychotherapist, have taught psych nursing, and worked for several years as a psych hospital surveyor for my state and the Feds.

[silentRN]

We have a full time CNS at the STICU i work for.

[Up2nogood RN, RN]

Those were the 1st positions to be cut in my hospital about 2 yrs back. Our NM used her assistant NM to pick up the role of CNS along with her other responsibilities.

We have a few nurses who finished their CNL program that a major university was pushing but now have no job prospects since most local area hospitals did away with that role too.

[RNperdiem, RN]

I have come across one in my 16 years in hospitals. I work in a major medical center. One of our assistant nurse managers is a CNS and she specializes in unit education as well.

I have not seen any job postings for them on our nursing website.

[K+MgSO4, BSN]

yes we have a few on the ward. One has an interest in stomal therapy and one has an ortho background and another has a urology post grad cert. we are a GI surgery ward but are becoming more involved in the trauma unit as well so they are a great resource. They take a pt load and do the same job as the RNs but are a resource person and present at study days and ward in-service and do projects to improve nursing care on the ward

[linearthinker, DNP, RN]

Where I am n ow, we have a CNS that specialized in wound care and ostomy issues. She works as a floor RN most of the time and when there are questions about issues in her area of expertise, someone says, "we'll ask Jane." My friend is a ONC CNS and she is working as a school nurse b/c she can't find any other day shift job. I do know one CNS who works at a huge research center in diabetes education, but she is a CDE in addition to CNS, and I don't know if the CNS impacted her getting that job. I would not go for a CNS in my part of the country base on what ive observed as gross underutilization of their knowledge and potential.

[foreverLaur]

My aunt is an acute care CNS. She works in a CVICU and works alongside the non masters degree prepared RNs. Her badge says "Jane Doe, RN, MSN." She takes care of patient's just like the rest of the RNs do (ADN, BSN or MSN).

[mystic33]

We have one on our floor but I have no idea what she does. She seems useless.

[JulVaccRN, BSN]

At my hospital, we have a CNS on almost every unit. My CNS is an excellent resource, and we pick her brain very often for things that are atypical on our unit. I love having them around!

[llg, PhD, RN]

We have one on our floor but I have no idea what she does. She seems useless.

Maybe you should find out what she does rather than make assumptions regarding things you don't know anything about. She might be a useful resource for you someday.