This is so true for me, too!
I remember the days when I was still overwhelmed with the problems of bedside nursing, feeling like I had no way out, when my husband suggested school nursing to me and I found this forum and read countless posts saying, "the worst day as a school nurse is still better than the best day as a bedside nurse." While there are aspects of bedside nursing that I miss, that statement has proven true for me in the year I've been at my school. Yes, our role is misunderstood, and a lot of the work we (or at least I--I'm not certified so I don't do IEPs and other "higher level" school nurse work) do can feel really trivial or at least COMPLETELY unrelated to our training, license, and education (lice, anyone? I die a little every time anyone acts like I am a lice expert, even though I have certainly educated myself on the subject). In the first few months I felt inundated and overworked. Nowadays there are days that I think, "wow, I saw 60 students but no one went home and no one really needed me" (knock on wood!). But I feel like there is more hope in the work I do here than there was in the hospital, I am more autonomous, and there is more room for me to grow.
Then again, my pay here is not that much less per hour than what I initially was making in the hospital. Plus I am starting a family so that makes the decision easier for me to work in this setting rather than one where I work holidays and weekends.
It's definitely a choice that has to be made and I can imagine it's not for everyone! I have thought many times that maybe I could find some place in some hospital that would work out for me, but overall I can't imagine choosing HCAPs, pain scales, unresponsive physicians, scripted bedside report, being shortstaffed, etc. over what I do now :)
