School Nursing.. now what?

[aidzbelty]

Hello fellow Filipino Nurses!

I need help over my career path, people who may have experienced or seem to understand my problem please give me your suggestions.

I've been a Registered Nurse in NCR since 2009, but like most RNs I ended up working in a Call Center for almost a year and after 10 months I left the company to try to re-establish my nursing career. Ever since I got my license I've been applying for hospitals all over NCR; even took up an IVT training and renewed my BLS-FA and even took some seminars to somehow upgrade my qualifications since its tough competition out there, but to no avail - I still haven't gotten in any hospital. I've started feeling down and try to blame my low board average (I got 79.xx%) or that I don't have backers, please don't get me wrong I'm not dumb or lazy, in fact I'm above average with respect to critical thinking and clinical performance.

So I tried from another point of view and now I'm working as a school nurse for a College offering 2-year courses for almost half a year. But the problem is I'm starting to do work that is outside my profession and more into the school operations and I'm afraid that if this goes on I will be stuck here instead of going up a higher level.

So now my questions are:

1. Is it possible to use my experience as a school nurse in hospital applications?

2. Any other trainings that I need not only to fully establish myself as a school nurse (because I've been browsing in the forums since 2009 and so far I haven't taken the OHSC seminar from DOLE) but also so I can use it as an advantage in applying to hospitals?

3. Should I pursue taking an MA degree?

4. What can I do as a school nurse that can improve my standing as an RN?

any kind of feedback is deeply appreciated, and Thank You in advance..

aidzbelty

[rhenmag9]

Hi aidzbelty, school nursing is counted as a clinical experience, you can take OHSC anytime you want and not leaving your job as a school nurse, and yes, you can take up Master's Degree, I myself worked also as a school nurse and while working on a school clinic, I took up my MA degree and then landed a job as a Nursing professor. You have plenty of time to do MA schooling and much better if you take some seminars for medical updates, ACLS ,BLS and other post-graduate trainings. Being a school nurse is fun, and you can study at the same time also. Love it and learn from it.

[aidzbelty]

thank you so much for replying, I feel hope after reading your post.. =)