ER nurse here, so what do you do as PH nurse?

Specialties Public/Community

Published

Hi, I have been doing bedside nursing for awhile and after transitioning to ER, I finally realized that bedside care is just not me. I am looking into lots of venues and PH/community nursing is a strong candidate, but I don't know ANYTHING about Public/community health nursing, and all I can think of it is working at HIV clinic or something.

Little things about what I want: no direct patient care (or as little as possible), work at desk, regular hours, room for advancements, business or casual formal attire, relatively relaxed and normal pace setting (compared to acute hospital setting), and just something "normal" people would do for living, not working 7pm-7am, listening to ridiculous complaints, dealing with unreasonable administrators, well I guess you see I am done with bedside care.

I know that public health sector has lots of diversities, but I am just very new to it, so could you guys and gals enlightened me a little bit on it please? Thank you.

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

.

0 Votes

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.

0 Votes
Specializes in public health.

a public health nurse would do all the things you want. For some people, the adjustment of pace is hard from being a nurse who runs around a lot to a nurse who sits at the desk a lot. For some people, the change to different types of work is very shocking. As a public health nurse, you don't get an assignment in the beginning of a shift, there is not even shift. You are not on your feet all the time. You are not dealing with life or death. It may sound like a joke but it's very very very hard to kill someone in public health. There are some similarities though. Both types of nurses would be very autonomous. I think if you want to maintain some of that clinical skills, you can start working in the immunization or family clinic. There are so many areas in public health that you can try. The sky is the limit.

0 Votes
Specializes in public health.

You probably want to start in the public health clinics. The other areas of public health are more vague, and don't always have a set of rules to follow.

0 Votes

I love your description of your job! I can definitely see myself pursuing something epidemiological at some point. I am nearing graduation from my BSN program and have recently discovered a passion for public health, but like many posters on here, have been concerned about forgoing hospital experience. One of the reasons I am attracted to working in the hospital is because it seems like they have more ability to take vacation days and also make more money. I would love to know what your experience has been working for a government agency with regards to time off/pay/benefits!

0 Votes

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.

During a time as a student in public health I definitely got this impression haha. Those nurses knew very well how to track down the sources of illnesses. I found it really fascinating actually.

I love your description of your job! I can definitely see myself pursuing something epidemiological at some point. I am nearing graduation from my BSN program and have recently discovered a passion for public health, but like many posters on here, have been concerned about forgoing hospital experience. One of the reasons I am attracted to working in the hospital is because it seems like they have more ability to take vacation days and also make more money. I would love to know what your experience has been working for a government agency with regards to time off/pay/benefits!

Looking at my local county, they seem to start off $71,827.20 - $91,496.16 Annually Full-time. Seems like the cap is $91K. Vacation begins at 10 days (so roughly 80 hours I'm guessing). Cap is eventually 25 days (200 hours). A far cry from the hospitals in the area which start off at 200+ hours of vacation and go into the 300+ after many years of working. But the County gets 13.5 Holidays a year.

The Sick time is much better at the County job than Hospital. The site states 15 days annually with unlimited accumulation. Also retirement is nice. Many of the nurses in the county retire in their 50s.

0 Votes
+ Add a Comment