How to become gov't nurse

There are non-bedside RN government jobs. You could try your local or state public health departments too if you want. I work as a public health nurse as a family home visitor doing a lot of teaching, case management, screening, community outreach, etc. to pregnant women and families who have young children. We also have nurses in our public health department that help the elderly/disabled population stay in their homes vs having to go to a nursing home by doing case management and PCA assessments etc. We have school public health nurses that do health education to students in schools and serve as a resource for students/families that need help accessing medical/dental care etc. They also are a resource for the teachers and staff at the schools for how they can handle student's health issues and make their school policies health focused. We have nurses that do outreach for certain programs like Child and Teen Checkups where they're calling families to let them know about their medical assistance benefits and trying to make sure they are taking their children into all their well child visits and getting their immunizations etc. In our TB Clinic our nurses do direct observation therapy to make sure the clients are taking their meds etc. If there are any infectious disease outbreaks we have to figure out who all came in contact with the infected persons and report certain diseases to the state and help to educate the community about avoiding getting sick themselves and trying to contain the disease. We also have some nurses that work in our healthy communities team that try to help change our community's policies, systems, and environment to make sure we have healthy affordable housing and access to grocery stores and parks and non-smoking areas etc. so people can live healthier lives. There really is a lot of opportunities to do non-bedside nursing in public health!

There are a ton of non-bedside jobs in the government healthcare systems, both in the VA and the DoD. You'll find all kinds of healthcare's administration jobs, case management jobs, etc throughout. Also don't forget that nurses work for the CDC, FEMA, CMS, USDA, FDA.....and so on. Check out usajobs.gov as the OP stated. Type in "0610" in the search bar-that's the job series # for nurses. You'll find hundreds of nursing jobs there all over the world, bedside and non-bedside. Best of luck.