PHNMike

Thank you, Siwan. Where I currently work, an MSN is required for management. I am not entirely sure I want to get into LHD nursing management. I harbor fantasies about creating a niche for myself; writing grants for community health education programs, which I then teach, and living happily ever after. Or, I can teach nursing to BSN students (urgh).

laflaca's points, it's all excellent, and very well written, highly readable, makes me want to read your chart notes. A couple things stand out to me though: as an ED nurse, or even on the floor, I attended staff meetings and skills training, but we had these after a shift, and they lasted a half hour or so, because only in rare cases would any of the attendees have anything to say. Nurses aren't dumb; we don't want to unnecessarily prolong something keeping us from the time we are normally beginning to decompress on the ride home. In-services were short affairs with cookies or donuts. The number of meetings and face to faces I go to now is significantly larger. ID involves a lot of phone calling. I've learned that, as an RN, my record of events is the official one even after being completed by a physician or epidemiologist. Practically, this means that being a good charter is essential, notes short sweet and pertinent, in a confident voice. On the other hand, her last point is a poser: wanting to diagnose and give direct care to clients. This is so true, at least of Epi/CD. Clinic nurses are in a different place. We run two full clinics with 25 nurses spread over both, offering a full boat of diagnostic and therapeutic courses. I'm rambling. One last thing: Nurses love to potluck. Everyone knows this. Most nurses understand that carbs are not a very efficient fuel, but that in the short term they can give a boost and they taste AMAZING. We have a cavalcade of nurse-driven potluck and food sharing. Much more so than any hospital I've been at. This has the bonus of being a bit of a joke too. If we ever had a foodborne illness outbreak, there's no question but that we'd find out exactly whose food gave it to us. Anyway, public health is great, Laflaca's has said it all.

Advanced Public Health Nurse. It's an emphasis or major for an MSN offered in some schools. LHD is Local Health Department.

I am considering applying to an APHN program but would like to know the usefulness of the degree. I know I can manage and supervise at my LHD, and I can teach (indeed the best job for me would be as a health educator), but what else? It's not an MPH so I wouldn't really do epidemiology. What else? My employer has a generous tuition reimbursement program that would pay for about a quarter of it since it would be an area of study that would make me more.valuable to them, but if it's just a way to get into management, I may just go gero-DNP and be done with it.

Also in Epidemiology/CD... I also like it very much. .

Generally, you should try to hit the meatus and then, if you miss and insert the foley lady partslly, you leave it there and try again with a new foley. I don't think assuming that you're going to miss is good practice.

Re: ED nursing, if it's right for you, you might never want to do anything else. I see ER nurses go to PACU, less commonly to ICU. In some ways ICU and ER are polar opposites. ER nursing is about emergent conditions requiring emergent, fly by the seat of your pants, no time to dick around implementation. ICU nursing can certainly get scary, but it's much more about being really, really anal about every lab value, every change.

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I came from the ER into public health (I work for a large, well funded County Health Department, currently in epidemiology doing investigations on reportables, but I was in the STI/Imms clinic before this). You'll have to get used to the patient being a group (a town, a community, a family) rather than an individual and, as compared with ER nursing, TONS of teaching opportunities.