jsterling01

Hi there fellow nurses! This is my very first New Topic so I hope I'm doing this right. I've got 8 years experience as an RN, first two on a cardiac step-down unit and the past 6 in ambulatory surgery as a pre-op and recovery room nurse. I enjoy the surgical setting and feel comfortable there but I'm feeling it's time to move on and grow in a different area of nursing. I am leaning toward case management later on down the road but am not ready to completely give up the "hands on" direct patient care of nursing just yet. There is a position posted at the medical center where I work for a Employee Health/ Occupational Health RN. I'm pretty certain I'm going to apply for it as I meet all of the required qualifications but I'm concerned as to whether I would take it or not if offered. I think I understand what an OCC Health nurse does but I don't know if know enough about what my day would be like. I'm not sure what types of questions to ask about the job to help my decide if this is what I would want to do or not. Can anyone share any insight on this with me as to the actual daily duties of a nurse in this type of position. I sure would appreciate it!

Hi Niki, I've been an Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) RN for the past 8 years. A typical day in the ASC would be either prepping patients for surgery or working in recovery, it just depends on the day. Our patients are typically healthy enough to walk in and most times walk out (depending on the type of surgery they had) in the same day. We open our department at 0600, first case starts at 0730 and are closed by 1800-ish, depending on how the last patients are recovering. We are closed weekends and holidays which is a bonus!

I have also been looking for and applying for telecommuting positions. I've been a nurse for 7+ years with a background in cardiac and PACU. It seems that a lot of the jobs are requiring some case management type of experience which has caused me not to apply for those positions. Wondering if I should apply anyway and see if I get any bites. Also, I'm looking for pretty much complete telecommute, as I've just moved from a metropolitan city to the middle of nowhere kind of. Does anybody know how that would work? Am I accurate in assuming that I would have to travel to an onsite training facility for a couple of weeks or so, and then I could do the rest from home? What is a day's work like for a telecommuting nurse? Any info on this would be appreciated!